JFS XFS and ReiserFS are dying

dr_te_z · 2008-12-16 12:30:43

Ranguvar wrote:

JFS users, why do you like JFS?

I already used the combo LVM/JFS in OS/2 and was very impressed back then. So when I switched to linux and ran into "ext2" checkdisks during boot I started to look for alternatives. I was happy to see that I could use JFS again. When I tried arch for the 1st time I saw that JFS was 'built in' already: a big pro for acch.
But yeah: it's IBM. When I attended a technical conference where they demonstrate DB2 on linux..... they use a standard SLES with ext2. When I ask why they do not promote their own JFS.... or they do not know the existance or they point as SuSE and say they use (and support) the standards set by SuSE. Too bad.

Still the same attitude that killed OS/2 (one department is promoting OS/2 and the ohter department is only selling IBM PC's with windows pre-installed)

jochen · 2008-12-17 07:36:43

What I'd like to see for a linux filesystem is the comfortable online-resizing that you have in AIX with LVM/JFS2:

  chfs -a size=+10G /mount/point
  chfs -a size=-10G /mount/point

fukawi2 · 2008-12-17 21:31:28

jochen wrote:

What I'd like to see for a linux filesystem is the comfortable online-resizing that you have in AIX with LVM/JFS2:

+1 *edits above post*

Kirurgs · 2008-12-18 09:13:17

I'm using reiser4 for /opt and /home for a week now. Only issue is fsync, which is kinda slow (for instance download a small file in firefox, it syncs really slow and firefox hangs for some time). etx3 didn't have this problem. If fsync can be fixed (mount options?), reiser4 is really fine for me.
JFS has bad defragmentation and performance around ext3, XFS has really slow deletes and write performance for small files (if this can be fixed, I'd use XFS), ext3 is overall the best mainly due to support, but it has average speed.
So, I may try btrfs or in case XFS can be tuned to work with small files - fine.

shazeal · 2008-12-18 09:47:57

Im wondering if you guys have actually tried ext4? It is not just ext3 in disguise as some of you seem to think. It is much faster than ext3, fsck takes next to no time for recovery. Its far more secure corruption wise than any of the above FS...

Question is not why are people using JFS, its why arent people using ext4 IMO. From the kernel activity for XFS I would not say its dead, however I dont pay much attention to the XFS notes so the patches may just be bug fixes.

Btrfs is supposed to be stable for Jan or Feb last I heard, so even if ext4 does not tickle your fancy ( I still dont see why ), zfs... oops I mean btrfs should keep you happy.

amranu · 2008-12-18 16:18:22

Because ext4 hasn't proven itself to be a stable filesystem yet?

Ranguvar · 2008-12-18 17:48:27

Yeah, definitely don't use ext4 for serious stuff _yet_. But it does look good, and at least its future is stable and bright, being an ext*.

kensai · 2008-12-18 19:08:18

shazeal wrote:

Btrfs is supposed to be stable for Jan or Feb last I heard, so even if ext4 does not tickle your fancy ( I still dont see why ), zfs... oops I mean btrfs should keep you happy.

It will be included in 2.6.29 Kernel, but to be stable it can even take a year, it will just enter the kernel, so more attention is drawn to it and people start helping in the development.

iBertus · 2008-12-18 19:59:54

Maybe I should give ext4 a try. Is it supported in tpowa's 2008.12 iso?

Kirurgs · 2008-12-19 07:58:59

I'll try ext4 in case I can't get my fsync working ok with reiser4...

iBertus · 2008-12-19 09:29:58

Anybody know what the easiest way to install Arch onto ext4 is? I'm waiting on the RAID to sync right now (it's bedtime) and figure I'll try to install in the morning (which will likely be noonish).

Xauthority · 2008-12-19 15:01:47

Well I have tried it. For me the easiest way was http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Cre … _Partition && http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Ins … ting_Linux

theringmaster · 2008-12-21 16:37:18

I use jfs as well. I use it in conjunction with 'elevator=deadline' and the 'noatime' attributes.

tonyisnt · 2008-12-22 01:02:25

I don't really see the differences in using other filesystems. I've been using Linux since 2005, when I started with Ubuntu 5.10, and I've always just stuck with ext3. After starting to use Arch I got another harddrive (250GB) and formatted it with reiserfs, but for some reason at startup it'd add another 10-15 seconds without fail to the Checking Filesystems step, so I eventually switched it over to ext3 as well.

I'm sure there are differences that would make using other FSs worthwhile, but even for me (someone who is probably more knowledgeable than your average computer user but by no means an "expert"), I don't see the point in terms of function. The only time I've lost any information when I was screwing around with cloning partitions in Gparted. So, in other words... it was my fault.

tcx · 2009-01-18 16:31:03

iBertus wrote:

Ranguvar wrote:
JFS users, why do you like JFS?
I find that JFS provides a nice balance for many different workloads. You can use it with small or large files and various I/O patterns, and the performance is relatively the same. Other filesystems I've tried tend to be far less generic in performance. Take XFS, which seems to bog down with directories full of small files. JFS isn't as good as ReiserFS in this situation, but doesn't suffer to the extreme of XFS. Also, JFS tends to be light on the CPU cycles, which is good for laptop use.

Ditto.

 cat /proc/mounts |grep -v none|grep -v rootfs
/dev/root / jfs rw,noatime,nodiratime 0 0
/dev/hda2 /var reiserfs rw,noatime,nodiratime,notail 0 0
/dev/hda4 /home jfs rw,noatime,nodiratime 0 0

cardinals_fan · 2009-01-18 19:01:46

Ranguvar wrote:

JFS users, why do you like JFS?

It performs very well, but won't fry my data when the power goes out (I'm looking at you, XFS!)

JFS also fscks very quickly in comparison to EXT3, which takes forever.

kjon · 2009-01-18 20:01:40

jfs crashes and after fsck'ing the root, the whole fs got corrupted. I know it isn't cpu hungry, but it tends to fragment and it runs very slowly *on my system*. On the other side, XFS behaves like a rock... yeah, yeah, it fried some mb time ago, but nothing to worry about if you know how to tune your sysctrl.conf and get a tiny, but trustfully UPS.

neowolf · 2009-01-18 20:23:45

xfs is NICE with big files, but whenever I'm dealing with a bunch of smaller files it tends to perform like a rock.

cerbie · 2009-01-19 00:51:54

I've found JFS to be fast, and recover from bad shutdowns very well. So far I've had no major data loss or corruption. Bad shutdowns have totally fried EXT3 partitions of mine many times, now once even with data=journal. I never had that happen with Windows+NTFS. JFS seems pretty good about it.

If EXT4 lives up to its hype, then bye bye JFS. I'm waiting for more distros to have OotB support, before I try it. IMO, Linux has been in great need of a commonly-supported FS superior to NTFS for a long time. EXT4 may be it.

Last edited by cerbie (2009-01-19 00:52:07)

cardinals_fan · 2009-01-19 01:08:35

kjon wrote:

jfs crashes and after fsck'ing the root, the whole fs got corrupted. I know it isn't cpu hungry, but it tends to fragment and it runs very slowly *on my system*. On the other side, XFS behaves like a rock... yeah, yeah, it fried some mb time ago, but nothing to worry about if you know how to tune your sysctrl.conf and get a tiny, but trustfully UPS.

We have a number of power outages in my area thanks to windstorms. I love that JFS a) didn't corrupt my data and b) recovered quickly.

HAMMER is really awesome, but it's mostly designed for obscenely large hard drives on servers.

Ranguvar · 2009-01-19 02:07:17

cerbie wrote:

IMO, Linux has been in great need of a commonly-supported FS superior to NTFS for a long time. EXT4 may be it.

Huh? If you ask me, any of the Linux journaled filesystems are equivalent to or better than NTFS. ext3, JFS, XFS, ReiserFS... at a basic level, they're all great, especially in that they require defragging much less than NTFS. And, I suspect they'd do just as well or better than NTFS at recovery after a power outage or similar.

cerbie · 2009-01-19 04:59:28

My experience has been that NTFS does need defragging much more, but is much more fault tolerant. I've lost EXT2, EXT3, RFS, and XFS* files, directories, and whole partitions quite a few times. NTFS has never performed as well (in Windows, that is), but has worked much better over the years, in terms of keeping data and structure over time. Short voltage drops (a good PSU takes care of those) and power outages are common here, and JFS is the only FS I've used that has been as tolerant as NTFS.

* by design, though, so, um, I stopped using it. I've lost whole partitions of the others.

sokuban · 2009-01-23 22:45:27

I'm thinking about getting a new fs for my laptop, and I'm between ext4 and jfs. Jfs sounds nice with its low cpu usage, and my laptop could really use that, but I'm worried about the fragmentation and all the maintenance required. I've never defragmented any of my ext3 partitions before and so far I haven't had any problems.

Jfs users, do you defragment your drive? If so, how? Is there any defragmentation utility that is safe? (I don't really have the money for another hard drive to backup on.) Would I be mad to consider using jfs if I am unable to defragment it at all?

I'm also debating whether I should keep reiserfs for my /var, upgrade it to reiser4 (I doubt it), or put a different filesystem on /var. Reiserfs has served me fine all these years, so I'm leaning towards keeping it, but I'm not sure if that is a smart idea with the current state of Mr. Reiser. I see someone else in this thread with a reiserfs /var. Are you planning on keeping it reiserfs or dropping it?

Last edited by sokuban (2009-01-24 01:35:45)

fwojciec · 2009-01-23 22:54:34

I just moved all my reiserfs/jfs partitions to ext4 -- and I couldn't be happier. Ext4 performance with pacman database is comparable to reiserfs, so I don't think you'd need separate /var if you go with ext4.

Ranguvar · 2009-01-24 02:31:23

In benchmarks so far, Ext4 seems to beat out ReiserFS in most battles. Versus Reiser4, it's close. The only real scenario that the Reisers excel at is deleting large numbers of files, IIRC. Reiser4 has some nice features like on-the-fly compression (great for saving space on /), but I decided on Ext4 so I could have more flexibility resizing partitions (you can't grow or shrink Reiser4), and because of assured support. Hopefully we will get btrfs soon, which has many of the improvements of both Reiser4 and ZFS.

Arch Linux

#26 2008-12-16 12:30:43

Re: JFS XFS and ReiserFS are dying

#27 2008-12-17 07:36:43

Re: JFS XFS and ReiserFS are dying

#28 2008-12-17 21:31:28

Re: JFS XFS and ReiserFS are dying

#29 2008-12-18 09:13:17

Re: JFS XFS and ReiserFS are dying

#30 2008-12-18 09:47:57

Re: JFS XFS and ReiserFS are dying

#31 2008-12-18 16:18:22

Re: JFS XFS and ReiserFS are dying

#32 2008-12-18 17:48:27

Re: JFS XFS and ReiserFS are dying

#33 2008-12-18 19:08:18

Re: JFS XFS and ReiserFS are dying

#34 2008-12-18 19:59:54

Re: JFS XFS and ReiserFS are dying

#35 2008-12-19 07:58:59

Re: JFS XFS and ReiserFS are dying

#36 2008-12-19 09:29:58

Re: JFS XFS and ReiserFS are dying

#37 2008-12-19 15:01:47

Re: JFS XFS and ReiserFS are dying

#38 2008-12-21 16:37:18

Re: JFS XFS and ReiserFS are dying

#39 2008-12-22 01:02:25

Re: JFS XFS and ReiserFS are dying

#40 2009-01-18 16:31:03

Re: JFS XFS and ReiserFS are dying

#41 2009-01-18 19:01:46

Re: JFS XFS and ReiserFS are dying

#42 2009-01-18 20:01:40

Re: JFS XFS and ReiserFS are dying

#43 2009-01-18 20:23:45

Re: JFS XFS and ReiserFS are dying

#44 2009-01-19 00:51:54

Re: JFS XFS and ReiserFS are dying

#45 2009-01-19 01:08:35

Re: JFS XFS and ReiserFS are dying

#46 2009-01-19 02:07:17

Re: JFS XFS and ReiserFS are dying

#47 2009-01-19 04:59:28

Re: JFS XFS and ReiserFS are dying

#48 2009-01-23 22:45:27

Re: JFS XFS and ReiserFS are dying

#49 2009-01-23 22:54:34

Re: JFS XFS and ReiserFS are dying

#50 2009-01-24 02:31:23

Re: JFS XFS and ReiserFS are dying

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