failures on machines using jfs

Hi all,

Chris Browne (one of my colleagues here) has posted some tests in the
past indicating that jfs may be the fastest filesystem for Postgres
use on Linux.

We have lately had a couple of cases where machines either locked up,
slowed down to the point of complete unusability, or died completely
while using jfs.  We are _not_ sure that jfs is in fact the culprit.
In one case, a kernel panic appeared to be referring to the jfs
kernel module, but I can't be sure as I lost the output immediately
thereafter.  Yesterday, we had a problem of data corruption on a
failed jfs volume.

None of this is to say that jfs is in fact to blame, nor even that,
if it is, it does not have something to do with the age of our
installations, &c. (these are all RH 8).  In fact, I suspect hardware
in both cases.  But I thought I'd mention it just in case other
people are seeing strange behaviour, on the principle of "better
safe than sorry."

A
--
----
Andrew Sullivan                         204-4141 Yonge Street
Afilias Canada                        Toronto, Ontario Canada
<andrew@libertyrms.info>                              M2P 2A8
                                         +1 416 646 3304 x110