Filesystem of choice?

The_Nerd · 2005-12-18 21:29:59

I was wondering what filesystems everyone used on their arch systems. I tend to switch between reiser3.6 and ext3. That being said, i know a good deal of users use xfs/jfs/etc. Whats popular around here?

ozar · 2005-12-18 21:58:42

ext3 works for me

scarecrow · 2005-12-18 22:25:39

Reiser 3.6, exclusively ( factly a lie: on small, ~40M /boot partitions I use ext2).

Snowman · 2005-12-18 22:35:44

I also use ext3.

There was a discussion/poll about favorite filesystem. Do a forum search to find the thread.

rose · 2005-12-18 22:50:47

Reiser 3.6 is unmaintained now. Ext3 is quite good and stable.

I don't switch filesystems that often. I did it once from reiser to ext3. Now I use ext3 exclusively.

I think you shouldn't experiment too much with filesystems. This is the single most important component of the operating system, which stores all your data. For me it's to risky to play with some possibly unstable fs.

T-Dawg · 2005-12-18 22:59:32

rose wrote:

Reiser 3.6 is unmaintained now.

thats not true. namsys openly vows to maintain reiser 3.6 and fix any bugs that may arise. They just are going to continue developing it any further since 4.0 is their new project.

I've always used reiser 3.6 which has never given me any trouble. I never tried Ext3 long enough to make an opinion.

The_Nerd · 2005-12-18 23:01:34

my apologies on starting a new thread snowman, i searched before i posted knowing that most forums have a thread like this at one point or another, but apparently i did not search well enough. :oops:

i asked because i found myself with some reiserfs problems from time to time and a good friend of mine just had a 200gb reiserfs partition die on him. i found myself giving ext3 a try on a few systems and havent really thought about reiser since. i wonderd if anyone had similar experiences or loved/hated any other filesystems. it always helps to know!

Snowman · 2005-12-19 00:36:04

The_Nerd wrote:

my apologies on starting a new thread snowman, i searched before i posted knowing that most forums have a thread like this at one point or another, but apparently i did not search well enough. :oops:

No problem. 8) Sometime searching gives too much results...

Gullible Jones · 2005-12-19 00:46:46

Ext3 with dir_index is quite fast, but with it I've had to defrag the pacman database once or twice a week. Ext3 seems not to like pacman that much. At least it doesn't grind for several minutes when you use pacman; that's more than could be said for XFS or JFS. Different hardware may give different results though - I'm pretty sure I'm the only person who's had this problem with ext3 and pacman fragmentation, and it might have been some kind of weird fluke.

Anyway... I'd say use ReiserFS or ext3 (ALWAYS with dir_index!*), and stay the hell away from XFS and JFS unless you have an uberfast hard drive with a huge cache.

*To make an ext3 filesystem with dir_index, use 'mke2fs -j -O dir_index' on the partition you want to format.

kth5 · 2005-12-19 01:14:58

ext3 never let me down so far. in a sense of stability, i think it's the best i ever ran my systems on. reiserfs wasn't all that bad but if it's screwed for some reason you can't recover files as easy as with ext* in most cases.

shadowhand · 2005-12-19 01:36:20

Ext3 (with dir_index) for me, with a ReiserFS (3.x) for /var (pacman seems to like it 8)).

jellywerker · 2005-12-19 01:37:45

Jones: can you do that after you have data on the drive?

Gullible Jones · 2005-12-19 01:52:15

Ask Codergeek. IIRC you can by using e2fsck when it's not mounted, but you have to do a fsck after that.

shadowhand · 2005-12-19 01:54:48

Gullible Jones wrote:

Ask Codergeek. IIRC you can by using e2fsck when it's not mounted, but you have to do a fsck after that.

Yup. There is a thread around called... uhm... here it is: http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?p=124880#124880

Kern · 2005-12-19 10:40:00

ReiserFS for me. not failed yet.

Had Ext3 on Fed3 prior to Arch, now i have a drive full of data that i havent found out how to access yet due to a screw up with LVM and Ext3 (a Fedora default install) when a bootup sequence crashed.
i fart in its general direction !

lucke · 2005-12-19 13:06:25

Your mother was a hamster and your father smelled of elderberries, Kern! ;-)

Yhm, on more serious note, since I have found codergeek's guide on gentoo forums, I'm using ext3. And I'm pretty happy with it.

Not that reiserfs was bad, whatsoever.

codergeek42 · 2005-12-19 17:12:47

Ext3 + dir_index + journal_data > *

8)

Gullible Jones · 2005-12-19 19:55:25

journal_data -> all writes take twice as long. I wouldn't bother with it unless you have data that you really want backed up as it's written.

codergeek42 · 2005-12-19 22:39:02

Gullible Jones wrote:

journal_data -> all writes take twice as long. I wouldn't bother with it unless you have data that you really want backed up as it's written.

Personally, I don't mind. it doesn't actually "feel" any slower..

Gullible Jones · 2005-12-19 23:04:14

When you're writing something big (read: copying home dir in preparation for reinstall), it sure does.

kth5 · 2005-12-20 07:02:05

Gullible Jones wrote:

journal_data -> all writes take twice as long. I wouldn't bother with it unless you have data that you really want backed up as it's written.

doesn't it more or less only store metadata about the last few transactions on the fs? i mean 32megs is the default size for a journal at least on ext3 which makes me wonder what could take twice as long. but yeah, i bet there are some caveats when you copy a large amount of small files from one fs to another.

Machiavelli · 2005-12-20 11:41:48

ext3 for the root partition, reiser4 for the data disks.

I'm a little scared about what's gonna happen when I have to run a kernel which doesn't support reiser4... so I should be going back to ext3.

ext2 for /boot.

Gullible Jones · 2005-12-20 11:50:00

kth5 wrote:

Gullible Jones wrote:
journal_data -> all writes take twice as long. I wouldn't bother with it unless you have data that you really want backed up as it's written.
doesn't it more or less only store metadata about the last few transactions on the fs? i mean 32megs is the default size for a journal at least on ext3 which makes me wonder what could take twice as long. but yeah, i bet there are some caveats when you copy a large amount of small files from one fs to another.

journal_data backs up *all* data to the journal. I'm guessing it doesn't use a journal with the default size.

T-Dawg · 2005-12-20 11:50:01

Machiavelli wrote:

ext3 for the root partition, reiser4 for the data disks.
I'm a little scared about what's gonna happen when I have to run a kernel which doesn't support reiser4... so I should be going back to ext3.
ext2 for /boot.

I think I heard a rumor that resier4 was going to be supported in kernel 2.6.16, dunno how true it is. It'll be supported soon enough though I'm sure.

Gullible Jones · 2005-12-20 11:50:49

The questions is, is it worth it? The speed is great, but from what I've heard fragmentation is a major issue.

Arch Linux

#1 2005-12-18 21:29:59

Filesystem of choice?

#2 2005-12-18 21:58:42

Re: Filesystem of choice?

#3 2005-12-18 22:25:39

Re: Filesystem of choice?

#4 2005-12-18 22:35:44

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