Arch Linux

Kienja Kenobi

Member

Registered: 2007-08-17

Posts: 62

World updates, ext4 and Reiser4, and offline installation Questions

I am deciding between Sabayon Linux and Arch Linux, and on the Sabayon forums the term "world update" is all over the place.  I am still not certain what exactly that term means, but I always see it used in conjunction with reconfigurations and recompiling the operating system.  On the other hand, a search for "world update" on the Arch forums yields absolutely nothing.  Why is this?  Is there any way or need to configure Arch Linux for a specific hardware setup? 

    This Wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison … tributions says that Arch Linux supports Reiser4, but that its support of ext4 is unknown/who knows.  In what way does Arch support either of these?  If I installed Arch onto a partition that has the Reiser4 file system, would Reiser4's full abilities be put to use?  I realize both Reiser4 and ext4 are experimental, so that might limit their current abilities, but I am mainly interested in what limitations there might be in using Arch and Reiser4 (or ext4) together. 

    How easy is it to download a package or open source on another computer and then install that package or open source onto Arch on a computer that does not have Internet access?  I do want the package manager to know about the installation so that the program can easily be removed.  Would it be very difficult to update programs by downloading the files elsewhere and installing them on a different computer?  Using dial-up is like trying to stand on a frictionless surface. 

Thanks

Last edited by Kienja Kenobi (2007-08-17 23:44:59)

lucke

Member

From: Poland

Registered: 2004-11-30

Posts: 4,018

Re: World updates, ext4 and Reiser4, and offline installation Questions

Sabayon is based on Gentoo, thus apparently you have to compile the source if you want to install anything, and recompile more of stuff if any more crucial parts (e.g. libs) of the userspace get updated. Updating Arch, considering its fundamentally binary nature, is way faster, easier and less error-prone. You needn't do any major hardware-specific configuring.

There is currently no reiser4-enabled kernel in the official repositories available - you'd have to patch the kernel yourself. ext4 is supported by a vanilla kernel, although it can't indeed be considered a safe choice yet.

Downloading separate packages on one box and installing them on the other is easy, doing big updates might be a bit more tricky, but nothing one couldn't handle.

Last edited by lucke (2007-08-17 23:56:53)

Kienja Kenobi

Member

Registered: 2007-08-17

Posts: 62

Re: World updates, ext4 and Reiser4, and offline installation Questions

I think that answers nearly everything!  Thank you!

Kienja Kenobi

Member

Registered: 2007-08-17

Posts: 62

Re: World updates, ext4 and Reiser4, and offline installation Questions

I have seen a lot of talk about ext4's instability, but exactly how is it not safe?  What actually noticeable bad things will take place if I use ext4 with Arch right now?

iphitus

Forum Fellow

From: Melbourne, Australia

Registered: 2004-10-09

Posts: 4,927

Re: World updates, ext4 and Reiser4, and offline installation Questions

I have seen a lot of talk about ext4's instability, but exactly how is it not safe?  What actually noticeable bad things will take place if I use ext4 with Arch right now?

Why do you need it?
Do you have extremely large disk volumes?
Do you need to deal with extremely large files?
Then there's the fact it's marked experimental and named "ext4dev"

James

Last edited by iphitus (2007-08-18 01:48:34)

jdhore

Member

From: NYC

Registered: 2007-08-01

Posts: 156

Re: World updates, ext4 and Reiser4, and offline installation Questions

I am deciding between Sabayon Linux and Arch Linux, and on the Sabayon forums the term "world update" is all over the place.  I am still not certain what exactly that term means, but I always see it used in conjunction with reconfigurations and recompiling the operating system.  On the other hand, a search for "world update" on the Arch forums yields absolutely nothing.  Why is this?

Basically, the ArchLinux equivalent of emerge world is:

pacman -Syu

mrbug

Member

Registered: 2007-07-17

Posts: 221

Re: World updates, ext4 and Reiser4, and offline installation Questions

Sabayon is precompiled Gentoo.

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lucke

Member

From: Poland

Registered: 2004-11-30

Posts: 4,018

Re: World updates, ext4 and Reiser4, and offline installation Questions

I have seen a lot of talk about ext4's instability, but exactly how is it not safe?  What actually noticeable bad things will take place if I use ext4 with Arch right now?

Last time I played with ext4 (few months ago), I got a totally corrupted partition after enabling delalloc (delayed allocation). That time (it might have changed since then) e2fsprogs' fsck didn't support ext4. You might be okay without enabling delalloc, but if fsck still doesn't support ext4, you might get in trouble nevertheless. There were some ext4 commits to 2.6.23 and some patchsets contain patches with some ext4 updates, it might be preferable to use those when playing with ext4.

Last edited by lucke (2007-08-18 14:52:35)

Kienja Kenobi

Member

Registered: 2007-08-17

Posts: 62

Re: World updates, ext4 and Reiser4, and offline installation Questions

Thank you.  I am rather certain that Arch has won the battle over Sabayon simply because it updates and runs out of the box much better than Sabayon. 
    According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_file_systems, ext4 has allocate-on-flush and extent features.  Those are both things that I would really like.  Reiser4 has these and several other features that I would like, but I certainly am not capable of patching Arch to work with Reiser4.  According to this same website, ext4 and ext3 have the same maximum file size limit.  The only gain in size is ext4's maximum volume size limit, which is certainly much more than ext3's.  Either way though, I am not worried about maximum file or volume limits.  I simply would like the features that ext4 contains that ext3 does not contain. 
    Thank you lucke for your help.  With that information I doubt I will try ext4 until it is considered stable.  That leaves me with ext3 or ReiserFS, and I think ReiserFS wins because of its tailpacking and block suballocation features. 

    Also, I am new to compiling, so if I compile a program on Arch, is the program registered with the package manager so I can easily remove it?  Is the program updated through the package manager?

lucke

Member

From: Poland

Registered: 2004-11-30

Posts: 4,018

Re: World updates, ext4 and Reiser4, and offline installation Questions

XFS is great for home partition, in my opinion. I'm indeed waiting for ext4 (to put on my /) for its features.

Search wiki for information regarding ABS.

Kienja Kenobi

Member

Registered: 2007-08-17

Posts: 62

Re: World updates, ext4 and Reiser4, and offline installation Questions

I guess the description of the Arch Build System makes it rather clear that it is meant to work with source.  Thank you. 

XFS ties with ext3 in my evaluations.  It is really great that XFS has allocate-on-flush and extent features, but it is not block journaled, and it does not have tailpacking or block suballocation.  I guess I will have to decide between tailpacking/block suballocating and block journaling (ReiserFS) or allocate-on-flush and extents (XFS)

Misfit138

Misfit Emeritus

From: USA

Registered: 2006-11-27

Posts: 4,189

Re: World updates, ext4 and Reiser4, and offline installation Questions

Also, I am new to compiling, so if I compile a program on Arch, is the program registered with the package manager so I can easily remove it?  Is the program updated through the package manager?

You can easily make a package from a source tarball using ABS, and then install it with pacman.. which would be the cleanest and most elegant method. I am sure most would recommend it.

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