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COMMUNISTCHINA

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Registered: 2008-06-16

Posts: 122

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JFS, ext3, ReiserFS...

What are the differences in filesystems?
I have always just used ext3 out of habit.

I went to a website that showed different benchmarks for each of the filesystems, but what exactly is a filesystem?
Does using JFS over ext3 present any challenges?

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czar

Member

Registered: 2008-03-08

Posts: 115

Re: JFS, ext3, ReiserFS...

check out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_file_systems
filesystem- The methods and data structures that an operating system uses to keep track of files on a disk or partition.
using different filesystems does not present any challenges afaik, you might just need to include a module.

ProfessorTomoe

Member

From: Garland, TX

Registered: 2008-02-12

Posts: 61

Re: JFS, ext3, ReiserFS...

check out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_file_systems
filesystem- The methods and data structures that an operating system uses to keep track of files on a disk or partition.
using different filesystems does not present any challenges afaik, you might just need to include a module.

Good advice.  Do a Google search for linux filesystem comparisons as well - you'll see success stories (and horror stories) for all the major types.

I'm personally using a mix of ext3 and ReiserFS filesystems on my Arch Linux disk's partitions.  Here's the layout:

/dev/sdb1 - /boot - ext3
/dev/sdb2 - / - ext3
/dev/sdb3 - swap
/dev/sdb4 - * used to hold extended partition *
/dev/sdb5 - /usr - ext3
/dev/sdb6 - /tmp - ext3
/dev/sdb7 - /home - ext3
/dev/sdb8 - /var - ReiserFS

I'm using ReiserFS on the /var partition because it really seems to speed up pacman and ABS accesses when compared to ext3.

moljac024

Member

From: Serbia

Registered: 2008-01-29

Posts: 2,676

Re: JFS, ext3, ReiserFS...

You know that putting swap on the first partition speeds it up a bit ? Not that it probably makes too much of a difference, although I wouldn't know since I never hit swap.

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Mr.Elendig

#archlinux@freenode channel op

From: The intertubes

Registered: 2004-11-07

Posts: 4,094

Re: JFS, ext3, ReiserFS...

I prefer maximum speed on / instead of swap. Alot more usefull, since when you got 500+mb of ram you usualy don't swap anyway, at normal desktop use.
Anyway, my settup is ext3 (with dir_index) on / and jfs on everything else. jfs seems to handle my 1.6TB of media files just nice. (and it don't take 2h to fsck at boot >_>)

Last edited by Mr.Elendig (2008-07-27 08:34:03)

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Misfit138

Misfit Emeritus

From: USA

Registered: 2006-11-27

Posts: 4,189

Re: JFS, ext3, ReiserFS...

ReiserFS on /var/. Everything else, JFS ftw.

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countercraft

Member

From: Montréal, CA

Registered: 2008-03-30

Posts: 31

Re: JFS, ext3, ReiserFS...

I use JFS on all my partitions. It's very fast. I don't like ext3 because I think it spends much space on HD (maybe it's probably a thing from my mind ). Another very good filesystem is XFS, but I don't use it because it's slow with small files; a pacman -Syu can be terrible . I've used ReiserFS a long time ago, but I think JFS is better. I also tested Ext4 on Fedora, and it's promising... when it becomes stable, I'm ready to switch to it.

kjon

Member

From: Temuco, Chile

Registered: 2008-04-16

Posts: 398

Re: JFS, ext3, ReiserFS...

Sorry for letting you down boys, but I'm a very big fan of XFS. A few tweaks to logsize and logbuffs and it's ready for the action. And sorry Misfit, I had a very hard time with jfs on a 5 TB LVM. Reiser for var and XFS goes to the rest, and ext2+tmpfs for my eee .

Hahaha.

p.s. I love xfs_fsr

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countercraft

Member

From: Montréal, CA

Registered: 2008-03-30

Posts: 31

Re: JFS, ext3, ReiserFS...

Hmmm... and about the slowness with small files? Install a package with pacman is really much slower than with the other filesystems, as also working with many small files. Does it has some special configuration? That is the reason because I don't use XFS (but I would like do).

Inxsible

Forum Fellow

From: Chicago

Registered: 2008-06-09

Posts: 9,183

Re: JFS, ext3, ReiserFS...

One problem with XFS or JFS is that GParted cannot resize or move those partitions.

Also, I use the following filesystems on my machine

/boot - ext2
/var - reiserfs
everything else - ext3 - gives me the option of upgrading to Ext4 without formatting and I never have more than 1GB size of any file.. so I don't think XFS is going to give me hugely improved performance.

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dolby

Member

From: 1992

Registered: 2006-08-08

Posts: 1,581

Re: JFS, ext3, ReiserFS...

everything else - ext3 - gives me the option of upgrading to Ext4 without formatting

Doubt it if you havent set inode_size to 256 which by the way grub doesnt support. grub2 will but its not yet usable

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Aaron

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From: PA, USA

Registered: 2007-12-19

Posts: 108

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Re: JFS, ext3, ReiserFS...

I like to use Ext2 for my /boot partition (Only 150mb or so)

ReiserFS for /var and usually root( / )

And ext3 for /home, so I can read files from windows the easiest.

No real benchmarked rhyme or reason, but it's always worked out well for me.  I've used JFS and XFS a few times, but I've never really gotten into them too deep.

fukawi2

Ex-Administratorino

From: .vic.au

Registered: 2007-09-28

Posts: 6,231

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Re: JFS, ext3, ReiserFS...

what exactly is a filesystem?
Does using JFS over ext3 present any challenges?

1. A file system is the methodology used by the operating system to organise your files on the hard disk. Kind of like how the valet probably has a method or choose where to park the cars.
2. The only 'challenge' I've come across using JFS is on my laptop and after an unclean shutdown (battery died) that the system wouldn't boot until I logged in under single user mode and manually ran fsck on the unhappy partition (/home)

And FWIW, I use the following partitioning scheme on my desktop:

/dev/sda1   /home   jfs    200gb
/dev/sdb1   swap    swap   4gb
/dev/sdb3   /boot   ext3   128mb
/dev/sdb2   /       jfs    146gb

And this on my 'server':

/dev/sda1                swap         swap   128mb
/dev/sda2                /home        jfs    172mb
/dev/sda3                /boot        ext3   16mb
/dev/sda5                /usr         jfs    727mb
/dev/sda6                /            jfs    242mb
/dev/sda7                /var         jfs    593mb
/dev/sda8                /tmp         jfs    128mb

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B-Con

Member

From: USA

Registered: 2007-12-17

Posts: 554

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Re: JFS, ext3, ReiserFS...

Here's a fairly thorough benchmark test done with various file systems. It seems that for file systems that deal with smaller files, JFS is the second best choice, behind Rieser, if you want to avoid Rieser.

http://linuxgazette.net/102/piszcz.html

I've always stuck with ext3, but I'm considering moving to JFS as soon as I can do some benchmarks of my own. I can't be bothered to maintain multiple partitions for various key hierarchy branches (/var, /home/, etc) since I keep at least two or three OSs installed at any point. And the speed performance is fairly negligible.

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