Suggested Filesystem??

s26c.sayan · 2007-03-28 19:42:47

Hi!!

I'v been playing with Arch Linux for the last few weeks. I had installed Arch on a small secondary partition, dual booting it with Ubuntu. Now that I am liking Arch so much, I think I'l make it my primary OS to be installed on a bigger partiton.
At this juncture, I'd like to know of your opinions regarding the various filesystems : reiserfs, xfs and jfs.
Personally I havn't used anything but ext3 , but would really like to try the other options.
Is there any known problem in Arch with those fs-s? (It seems there are some with reiserfs). Will I notice any boost in performance by using them?
In short, what should be the best fs to use?

Lontronics · 2007-03-28 19:45:17

Reiserfs is taking a lot of time with mounting partitions.
Xfs is the fastest of the three, although the differences with jfs are small.
But you can find a lot about that on the internet

When you want a fast filesystem, you should use ext2.
This is the fastest, but also the simpliest...
I am using ext2

Jan

Stalwart · 2007-03-28 20:06:17

Reiser is fastest for small files, XFS rocks for >5Gb files, but ext3 is most widely used, must supported and most polished filesystem in linux

Damnshock · 2007-03-28 20:17:56

Ext2 doesn't have journaling!!! be careful!

jerem · 2007-03-28 20:21:45

I recommend using ext3 for all directories except /var.
Use reiserfs on /var, since it is very fast with the pacman db, whereas ext3 is performing poorly.

Lontronics · 2007-03-28 20:31:23

I know, that's why I call it simple

But I do make backups, and it is running fine for more then three years now on three systems; never had a problem with it

Jan

s26c.sayan · 2007-03-28 20:32:00

Thanks for all those quick replies!!!

Well, so far it seems the opinions suggest that I should continue with ext3.
However, I'm kinda liking the name REISERfs :P:P...and would like to give it a try, if for nothing else but for the sake of trying a new stuff!!
I think I'l make my / partiton reiser, and keep the /home on ext3.
But before finalizing, please tell me, whether I should expect to face any SIGNIFICANT problems with Reiser.

jerem · 2007-03-28 21:14:57

Reiserfs is really stable and has been around for a while.
You should not have any trouble with it.

Zer0 · 2007-03-28 22:10:42

I just recently re-installed arch to go with reiser and I can say I was not happy at all with the mount times for large drives.
Also the main developer Hans Rieser is on trial for the suspected murder of his wife. Maybe something to consider as it may
affect development of newer rieserfs's..

1) Rieser 3 doesn't update to Rieser 4..
2) ext3 will update to ext4

I switched back to ext3 with dir_index enabled.. ext3 performance wiki

cactus · 2007-03-28 22:18:59

I also use ext3 with the performance tweaks in the wiki too. Works great.

joaospinto · 2007-03-28 23:18:04

damn, why did i reinstall arch with ReiserFS? LOOL! i didnt know that about ext3 and ext4.. will ext4 be well-supported by windows? how long will it take for ext4 to be current? will the difference of large/small files still exist? and xfs / jfs, will they have a 4th generation version? best regards!

Damnshock · 2007-03-28 23:53:09

ext4 won't have any significant improvements over ext3 but a bigger partition and larger files support.

Damnshock

iBertus · 2007-03-29 00:19:33

I'm using JFS for everything and it works well too. I can't complain.

paranoos · 2007-03-29 06:05:30

reiserfs mounting speeds have been fixed. a patch was merged into the main kernel a few months ago.

lucke · 2007-03-29 07:26:10

That could be of some interest.

I myself use XFS for my /home, because it offers the best set of tools (eg. xfs_fsr - online defragmentator - and xfs_bmap) and nice set of features (e.g. extents and delayed allocation, both available also only in reiser4 and in ext4).

ext4 can prove to be very interesting as well, but needs some time to become fully featured. reiser4 with transparent compression could be a killer.

Last edited by lucke (2007-03-29 07:34:21)

chaosgeisterchen · 2007-03-29 07:48:01

All the benchmarks concerning Reiser4 suggest, that I shall once try it out. It seems to be great above all, but ext4 could probably catch up.

iphitus · 2007-03-29 08:03:33

Zer0 wrote:

Also the main developer Hans Rieser is on trial for the suspected murder of his wife. Maybe something to consider as it may affect development of newer rieserfs's..

Completely irrelevent point. There's more developers than him, and as it's in the main kernel (r3), it's maintained by heaps of people

1) Rieser 3 doesn't update to Rieser 4..

And ext3 doesnt 'update' to XFS.

Reiser4 is a completely new filesystem, and has no technical link to reiser4. Reiserfs will continue to be maintained.

2) ext3 will update to ext4

That's because they're essentially the filesystem + a few features such as larger file support and larger size support.

All the same, I use ext3, as it's got the widest support, and has had more attention than any other.

James

noriko · 2007-03-29 08:32:40

I'm using reiser4 here on one of my spare installs .. it works perfectly well, but there appears to some instability with such things as the nvidia driver and or enemy-territory (X locks up sometimes if i try to switch X sessions, this may result in an automatic reboot if i try to switch out of the locked up session.(killing it resolves the issue)) I'm sure this has something to do with reiserfs* because it does not happen with ext* ...
on performance; (based on the feel of app loading and general read performance, the writes aren't so much an issue for me as i do much that requires a lot of disk writing) i find reiser3 to be slightly slower than reiser4 which in turn appears slower than ext4 ... ext4 performs about the same as ext2 faster in some cases (writes, so file copies are faster)

:rank:
ext4 (beats ext2 because of faster writes and journalling)
ext2
reiser4
reiser3
ext3

:hdparm:

/dev/sda: Timing buffered disk reads: 132 MB in 1.73 seconds = 76.09 MB/sec
/dev/sda1(ext2): Timing buffered disk reads: 228 MB in 3.01 seconds = 75.78 MB/sec
/dev/sda2(reiser4): Timing buffered disk reads: 224 MB in 3.01 seconds = 74.34 MB/sec
/dev/sda3(ext4): Timing buffered disk reads: 228 MB in 3.01 seconds = 75.64 MB/sec
/dev/sda5(reiser3): Timing buffered disk reads: 216 MB in 3.02 seconds = 71.61 MB/sec
/dev/sda6(ext3): Timing buffered disk reads: 216 MB in 3.02 seconds = 71.45 MB/sec

:final:
hdparm results are run 3 times with the mid. result being posted (i think this poses a more fair result in terms of cache and background disk activity during tests)

----------
i hope this helps in your decision ... I'm just waiting jsut for the next kernel release to see if there are any improvements that makes it a definite ext4 use for me ...

iphitus · 2007-03-29 09:31:28

noriko wrote:

Ifaster)
<snip>
:hdparm:
/dev/sda: Timing buffered disk reads: 132 MB in 1.73 seconds = 76.09 MB/sec
/dev/sda1(ext2): Timing buffered disk reads: 228 MB in 3.01 seconds = 75.78 MB/sec
/dev/sda2(reiser4): Timing buffered disk reads: 224 MB in 3.01 seconds = 74.34 MB/sec
/dev/sda3(ext4): Timing buffered disk reads: 228 MB in 3.01 seconds = 75.64 MB/sec
/dev/sda5(reiser3): Timing buffered disk reads: 216 MB in 3.02 seconds = 71.61 MB/sec
/dev/sda6(ext3): Timing buffered disk reads: 216 MB in 3.02 seconds = 71.45 MB/sec
.

Um, hdparm is a hardware test, it has zero interfacing with the filesystem. Any differences within the tests, were due to uncontrolled variables, such as other processes using the disk.

Also, seek time to further regions of a hard dsk are generally slower too.... so you can't fairly compare a filesystem on sda1 to one on sda6. Other differences such as filesystem size and contents make a big difference too when comparing filesystems.

James

lloeki · 2007-03-29 09:42:09

IIRC there's benchmarking software called bonnie++ which evaluates fs performance. but remember that benchmarks just lie.

but hey, given all the horror stories about reiser4 (userland software should never ever be able to f*ck up fs, yet it does under r4, e.g with emerge/portage), given that reiser/xfs/jfs do not do full journalling (at least not by default, and I don't know if they can), given the absolute lack of ext3 horror stories, and given that ext3 performance is more than sufficient, even without tweaking, I certainly will stay with ext3 (and will take a look someday at those fs options)

Last edited by lloeki (2007-03-29 09:47:56)

Borosai · 2007-03-29 17:30:48

I am going to install Arch64 today or tomorrow, and I was wondering if I could implement the ext performance tweaks at a certain time during the installation, or would I have to wait until after the installation?

lucke · 2007-03-29 17:34:28

You should be able do it during the installation - run setup, set up partitions, then change to available virtual console and play with tune2fs. Afterwards continue with the installation steps.

Borosai · 2007-03-29 17:40:13

lucke wrote:

You should be able do it during the installation - run setup, set up partitions, then change to available virtual console and play with tune2fs. Afterwards continue with the installation steps.

Sounds like a plan. Thanks.

silvik · 2007-03-29 18:25:12

I use reiserfs for the system partition (/) and xfs for all others (/home etc). XFS is great, rock solid and fast. Reiserfs works better with small files, but XFS is my favourite.

I use these options to mount XFS: defaults,nosuid,nodev,usrquota,noatime,nodiratime,logbufs=8,biosize=16 and it's very snappy. much snappier than the defaults (gentoo docs rock)

xfs_fsr is the official defragmenter and even most people will say that linux FSs don't need defrag my opinion is that you can feel an improvment. I use p2p quite a lot and my disks are always nearly full, constant write/delete/move disk trashing etc.

my2c

Lontronics · 2007-03-29 19:35:35

@Silvik;

Indeed, normally you do not need defragmentation.

And indeed, when you are using programs like for example Limewire, and you are downloading a lot of files together, or you do have a harddisk which is almost full, files can get fragmented.

For me, I always have had harddisks with enough space, and also with XFS, I never had to defragment and defragmentation had no possitive effect at all.

I think the differences between all journalised file-systems are so small, it is good to think about standard kernel-support also. For example reiserfs is not supported with a lot of distro's out of the box.

And I did not test the EXT3 optimisations as mentioned above, but I can imagine that an EXT3 filesystem with optimalisations enabled, would be a better choice for most users then XFS or Reiserfs.

Jan.

Arch Linux

#1 2007-03-28 19:42:47

Suggested Filesystem??

#2 2007-03-28 19:45:17

Re: Suggested Filesystem??

#3 2007-03-28 20:06:17

Re: Suggested Filesystem??

#4 2007-03-28 20:17:56

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#5 2007-03-28 20:21:45

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#6 2007-03-28 20:31:23

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#7 2007-03-28 20:32:00

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#8 2007-03-28 21:14:57

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#9 2007-03-28 22:10:42

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#10 2007-03-28 22:18:59

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#11 2007-03-28 23:18:04

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#12 2007-03-28 23:53:09

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#13 2007-03-29 00:19:33

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