Can XFS be used for /boot and / as a filesystem in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6?

Environment

• Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6
• Red Hat Scalable File System

Issue

• Can XFS be used for /boot and / as a filesystem in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6?

Resolution

• XFS can not be used for /boot and / as a filesystem in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.
• If XFS is selected for / or /boot at install time, Anaconda will flag it as an error, and disallow the configuration.
• The XFS filesystem can be used for creating larger filesystems, but one can not use XFS for /boot and / partitioning. The GRUB bootloader in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 supports only the ext2, ext3, and ext4 (recommended) filesystems. Any other filesystem for /boot can not be used, such as Btrfs, XFS, or VFAT. See the "GRUB Boot Loader" section in the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 Installation Guide.
• The plan is to make XFS the default File System for / root volume in RHEL 7.

Important Points:

• The XFS kernel module/driver is included in the standard RHEL kernel. However, no support for XFS is offered without a subscription to the Red Hat Scalable File system channel.
• Although the Anaconda install environment includes mkfs.xfs, this and other utilities will not be present on the installed system without a Scalable File System subscription.
• Any updates, such as bugfixes, for the XFS kernel module/driver are provided in the regular Errata releases of the kernel RPM package.
• Subscription to RHEL Scalable File system provides the userspace utilities (xfsprogs) which provides the functionality for creating, administering and troubleshooting of the XFS filesystem.

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