Question

How do I know if my Ubuntu droplet is using the XFS filesystem?

I recently set up the one-click MongoDB 4.0.2 droplet on Ubuntu 18.04. When I enter the MongoDB shell I get the startup warning:

** WARNING: Using the XFS filesystem is strongly recommended with the WiredTiger storage engine

I have three questions:

  1. How do I know if I’m using the XFS filesystem?
  2. If I’m not using it, how do I switch to it?
  3. If I don’t use XFS, will MongoDB still function properly?

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jarland
DigitalOcean Employee
DigitalOcean Employee badge
March 8, 2019
Accepted Answer

Greetings!

Great question. By default our droplets use ext4, and you can confirm this with the following command:

df -Th

I found an article that suggests a path for converting the filesystem:

https://fedoramagazine.org/transform-file-systems-in-linux/

I cannot guarantee that using alternate file systems will not interfere with certain functions of our cloud panel.

Jarland

  1. df -T should give you idea what FileSystem type you are using
  2. The only way to use an XFS based filesystem after the VM has been created, is to use a Volume from DO Storage and mount it using xfs driver.
  3. Mongo will definitely complain about the underlying FS not being the XFS, but it will run to the extent ext4 ( default FS ) supports it to run. However, the performance is degraded. this is what is happening with us as well.

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