optimizing XFS (file system corruption)

hypermegachi · 2004-08-08 00:29:43

reiserfs recently crapped out on me, corrupting everything :'(

anywho, reiserfs has corrupted on me 2 times beforehand with slack, so i decided to try something new this time. so i picked XFS.

anywho, i noticed a significant drop in performance using pacman -S
before with reiserfs, pacman -S anything, and in a blink of an eye it would ask me yes/no. but now, sometimes the HD light will flash and flash for like 30 seconds before i get the yes/no.

does anyone have some tips on increasing XFS performance? if at all?

IceRAM · 2004-08-08 10:31:32

http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?t=3376

Check the links in that thread, especially this one: http://209.81.41.149/~jpiszcz/index.html
To my understanding, XFS is optimized for big files, pacman's DB consists of lots of very small files => slow access (nothing to be done to correct this). You might want to try JFS, but I haven't heard many people using it, I don't know why.
Taking a look on Reiser4, it seems it will have better support for large files, better than XFS has now - then again, it's still in testing.

You should choose the FS depending on your needs.

It's kind of strange to get the FS corrupted several times, even on different distros. Are you sure there's nothing wrong with your HDD (buffers/access mode/something like that)?

hypermegachi · 2004-08-08 14:42:08

dunno...my HD should be fine, cuz that drive doesn't have any problems with the ntfs/fat32 partitions i use with windows.

IceRAM · 2004-08-08 14:58:05

How did your partitions get corrupted?
power failure? Has this ever happened while you were in Win?

sarah31 · 2004-08-08 15:04:08

Repeated filesystem corruptions should not be happening. It happened twice with me but it ended out that the hard drive was ..... crap.

IceRAM · 2004-08-08 15:19:22

One more idea:
Your HDD might be damaged (demagnetized) on the Linux partitions only, not on the Windows ones.

hypermegachi · 2004-08-08 16:20:34

well the funny thing is, this has happened to me on both my drives. so it's unlikely that they both screwed up on me.

and to add to the funniness, the time before this when i got a corrupted file system was last xmas. i flew home for 2 weeks. i left my computer on the whole time, running xp, with vnc on (of course i forgot about changing my firewall settings so i was effectively locked out that 2 weeks). when i got back, i wasn't able to boot into slack anymore. it give me a shitload of error messages. so i have no clue how that would have corrupted the filesystem.

i really don't know if it's reiser or my HD. but in the past when i tried redhat where ext3 was default i never had these problems.

IceRAM · 2004-08-08 17:05:27

Running WinXP?... that's a flavour of Windows isn't it?

Well.. some time ago, when I bought a computer of mine, I installed Win2k. After some time, it started marking bad sectors on the HDD by itself - I had only Windows at that time (Windows likes to do things by itself - most of the Linux users noticed this). How did I find this? I looked in the Computer Management Console, into Events and Logs - WinXP should also have it. You could have a look over it and check if Windows, during those 2 weeks, didn't start some kind of disk checking and marked tons of sectors on the Linux partition as bad sectors.

P.S. the seller of my PC replaced that HDD with a new one

hypermegachi · 2004-08-08 21:59:43

haha that's one way to keep linux users from staying on windows...purposely screwing up those linux partitions

IceRAM · 2004-08-09 07:39:13

You should still check the logs. You never know what's behind that proprietary software.

In my case, it was marking bad sectors on another Windows partition. I don't think I had Linux on the computer at that time.

hypermegachi · 2004-08-09 15:20:34

unfortunately i did my annual windows reinstall 2 months ago
and still it gets P0WNED in boot up time (almost double the time)

i3839 · 2004-08-09 15:23:17

Bad memory can cause major filesystem corruption too, especially with filesystems that are more sensitive to such things, like Reiserfs. So try running memtest86 for some hours.

IceRAM · 2004-08-09 16:21:48

i3839 wrote:

[..] try running memtest86 for some hours.

When I installed Arch on my computer (the only one & first install) the kernel hung on every first boot in every day. Rebooting did the job and I had no problems afterwards. Sometimes later, I've decided to free a memory slot by move some memory in the other computer I have at home, for my brother. He's running WinXP. Guess what? WinXP's kernel crashed all the time. I've located the bad memory module and never used it since.

It didn't need "some hours" to detect it wasn't good. In my case, memory getting heated made the computer (Linux) work well. It's true, there might be cases when excessive heating make the memory modules work bad such as after 2 weeks of running WinXP.

hypermegachi · 2004-08-09 18:05:32

my computer was on 24/7 anyways during the school year, so those 2 weeks were just "like every other day" for my computer.

hypermegachi · 2004-08-10 06:25:10

anyways, back on semi topic...

i noticed that pacman only slows down when it has to sync with a new package it hasn't synced before. if i used sync on package foo, then every time after that whether i remove or upgrade or whatever with that package is fast like normal.

does pacman have some kinda cache feature or something that i can just update all at once?

Arch Linux

#1 2004-08-08 00:29:43

optimizing XFS (file system corruption)

#2 2004-08-08 10:31:32

Re: optimizing XFS (file system corruption)

#3 2004-08-08 14:42:08

Re: optimizing XFS (file system corruption)

#4 2004-08-08 14:58:05

Re: optimizing XFS (file system corruption)

#5 2004-08-08 15:04:08

Re: optimizing XFS (file system corruption)

#6 2004-08-08 15:19:22

Re: optimizing XFS (file system corruption)

#7 2004-08-08 16:20:34

Re: optimizing XFS (file system corruption)

#8 2004-08-08 17:05:27

Re: optimizing XFS (file system corruption)

#9 2004-08-08 21:59:43

Re: optimizing XFS (file system corruption)

#10 2004-08-09 07:39:13

Re: optimizing XFS (file system corruption)

#11 2004-08-09 15:20:34

Re: optimizing XFS (file system corruption)

#12 2004-08-09 15:23:17

Re: optimizing XFS (file system corruption)

#13 2004-08-09 16:21:48

Re: optimizing XFS (file system corruption)

#14 2004-08-09 18:05:32

Re: optimizing XFS (file system corruption)

#15 2004-08-10 06:25:10

Re: optimizing XFS (file system corruption)

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