ext4 reflections

fsckd · 2010-02-15 00:42:16

It has been over a year since a stable ext4 was made available. I'm certain many of you are making use of it on one partition or another. I would like to see some anecdotes. How do you feel it compares to ext3 or ext2 (or something else like reiser3 if you wish)? Is it faster, more stable, or more efficient, in your opinion?

For me, I have been using it on data storage partitions. Fscking is pleasantly much faster. While I have experienced several system crashes, there is no noticeable corruption.

DonVla · 2010-02-15 03:47:23

Hmm, no anecdotes here. Must be a good sign.
Afair, reiserfs was the "fastest" filesystem for the /var partition. But once again: What is speed?
Pacman was slightly faster.
I guess for the "normal" user the real fast fsck is the most noticeable improvement.

Vlad

PS: I changed all my partitions to ext4.

Last edited by DonVla (2010-02-15 03:50:06)

lustikus · 2010-02-15 07:47:01

I have ext4 on my main partitions and never noticed any problems.

Has anone tried btrfs yet?

axel668 · 2010-02-15 08:25:37

been running ext4 since about 1 year with no problems ... apart from that, 4 > 3, so it must be better, right !??

dyscoria · 2010-02-15 10:05:16

Files delete alot quicker with ext4 compared to ext3

ngoonee · 2010-02-15 11:12:42

dyscoria wrote:

Files delete alot quicker with ext4 compared to ext3

Oh cool, now I can fubar my install 3 times as quickly =P

And yes, been using it since last year, no problems at all. Can't say I feel a speed difference though.

JohannesSM64 · 2010-02-15 11:52:27

I've used ext4 for some months, no problems.

flamelab · 2010-02-15 11:55:01

No issues with ext4 so far, many months now.

lman · 2010-02-15 13:50:40

using ext4 for half a year now with no problems. fsck-ing is way faster with ext4 on bigger partitions >100G. With ext3 it was painfully slow.

mythus · 2010-02-15 14:15:04

Greetings,

I have been using ext4 for all partitions except for /var which I use rieserfs for around a year now. I couldn't remember what the big deal between ext4 and ext3 was so I tried an ext3 using distro and noticed that files transfer, copy, delete, and are opened faster on an ext4 file system than on an ext3 file system, or at least it feels like that. I have not had any data loss or corruption on an ext4 filesystem.

I can tell you that riserfs still works best for /var than ext4, for me at least. Compared between the two, riserfs seems faster with pacman and the like.

outerdark · 2010-02-15 14:55:27

lustikus wrote:

Has anone tried btrfs yet?

i used btrfs some time ago for a few months and noticed annoying wrong calculated (free) diskspace problems, but i didn't test any special setup with btrfs

barzam · 2010-02-15 15:40:27

I have been using it for about a year. I never had any problems whatsoever, but the only thing different (compared to my old ext2 fs) is the much faster fsck.

anonymous_user · 2010-02-15 16:02:43

I've been using ext4 since I started Arch 4 months ago. Thankfully I've had no problems so far.

antonikus · 2010-02-15 16:36:17

A couple of months, no problems.

kgas · 2010-02-15 17:06:25

since ext4 comes to arch, I am using it except on one laptop with SSD. no problem. (for / and /home)

lucke · 2010-02-15 17:37:02

Hibernation has regressed for me lately, forcing me to do unclean shutdowns, and in effect I've finally lost an ext4 data partition. Conversely, my btrfs root partition hasn't been affected.

dhave · 2010-02-15 17:44:00

No probs here after 13 months. I did enable barriers early on after reading about a possible problem related to file writes. Maybe that's why I don't notice a speed difference.

I would like to try online defrag, which has been promised but I don't believe has shown up yet. The only defrag approach I've played with is Con Kalivas's script. I know fragmentation isn't supposed to be such a huge problem with most Linux filesystems (I'm *not* trying to rekindle that discussion here!), but I like to keep my drive tidy (even though my socks don't match half the time).

Last edited by dhave (2010-02-15 17:47:17)

karabaja4 · 2010-02-15 18:19:18

No problems lately I must say. At first when ext4 only came out I had problems with dissapearing files at unclean shutdown. For example when editing xorg.conf and system would freeze, after force shutdown the file would become blank. It would still be there, but as a blank file.

But for some number of months (a year?) it's really rock stable and I haven't got any problems with it at all.

weakhead · 2010-02-15 18:40:25

Using ext4 since kernel 2.6.30 (under Arch). Absolutely no problems so far.

Misfit138 · 2010-02-15 21:37:19

I've been using it on 2 of my systems; not particularly impressed with it, but it's been stable and has worked well enough.
I suppose I may have been sucked in by some hype and actually expected a noticeable difference in performance.

Themaister · 2010-02-15 21:46:43

I even use ext4 on my home server It's pretty good. And I've had plently of hard shutdowns.)

archlinuxsagi · 2010-02-16 02:37:34

Themaister wrote:

I even use ext4 on my home server It's pretty good. And I've had plently of hard shutdowns.)

It depends on when the hard shutdown occur i believe. I am currently using ext4 on a slightly unimportant partition.

fumbles · 2010-02-16 07:08:01

I have used ext4 with the power cutting out several times without any problems. I have found it much faster then reiserfs.

R00KIE · 2010-02-16 14:29:52

I'm using ext4 in all the partitions now, after the last patch commits to improve data security I feel it has become slower (noticeably when doing pacman -Syu and extracting the package list). No sad stories about data corruption though and I very much welcome the faster fsck.

fsckd · 2010-02-16 23:42:38

I guess most people are satisfied to some extent. (pun intended?)

Arch Linux

#1 2010-02-15 00:42:16

ext4 reflections

#2 2010-02-15 03:47:23

Re: ext4 reflections

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