what filesystem

Cew27 · 2009-01-05 18:32:26

hey ugys im wondering what filesystem i should use for my dell xps m1330 laptop, what is fastest/best in the default arch install

kjon · 2009-01-05 18:56:24

I would stick to ext3 for a default install.

perbh · 2009-01-05 19:55:19

And I would say 'reiserfs' every time!!

skottish · 2009-01-05 19:57:24

ext4 is enabled in all the stuff in testing. The new kernel and all of it's supporting libraries are going to be released into core very soon.

fwojciec · 2009-01-05 20:02:16

I've always used reiserfs on root and ext3 for home/data partitions. Right now I've moved all my home/data partitions to ext4, I'm tempted to do the same for my root partitions.

sirius · 2009-01-05 20:27:02

I've switched to ext4 on /, but are still using ext3 on my /home. Had a possible corruption on / a few days ago, so I'm waiting a bit before doing ext4 on /home. (Yes, I do take backup ;-)

cdwillis · 2009-01-05 20:58:31

All of my partitions are reiserfs and before I had always used ext3, but I really can't tell any difference speedwise now.

evilgold · 2009-01-05 21:24:09

I personally use XFS, because it seems to me faster when managing large amounts of files. However the choice in a good filesystem is very dependent on the files being kept on it. Ext3 is always a safe middle ground, but its not as fast as reiserfs or xfs.

See: http://www.debian-administration.org/articles/388 for some detailed benchmarks

iBertus · 2009-01-05 21:35:52

I've always used JFS for all of my partitions, but now I've switched to ext4. Can't tell a difference other than the first time I booted with ext4 the filesystems all mounted readonly due to my stupid mistake in fstab...

sokuban · 2009-01-05 22:27:16

ext3 is the filesystem that the average person uses. If you are new to Linux, this is probably your best bet. I use this for / and /home.

ext4 is the next version of ext3 that supports all these good things. It is new, so it might be a little unstable, but I haven't heard any horror stories. Remember if you use ext4 you can't use it for your /boot partition unless you have the new grub.

reiserfs is good at dealing with lots of small little files. I use this on /var since I hear the pacman database has lots of small little files. I'm not sure if this is the smartest thing to do or not. Mr. Reiser went to jail for murdering his wife, so work on it and its successor is poor.

xfs is good at dealing with big multimedia files. Whatever you do, /do not/ have /var on an xfs partition.

Last edited by sokuban (2009-01-05 22:28:38)

xaiviax · 2009-01-05 22:37:12

iBertus wrote:

I've always used JFS for all of my partitions, but now I've switched to ext4. Can't tell a difference other than the first time I booted with ext4 the filesystems all mounted readonly due to my stupid mistake in fstab...

Any difference in cpu usage?

fukawi2 · 2009-01-05 23:14:02

I always use JFS on Laptops. Haven't done any comparisions about CPU usage, but my laptops have always been stable and good battery life with JFS. Haven't experienced data loss, even when the battery goes flat and kills everything. JFS Journal is very fast to replay (because it's only meta-data)

Cew27 · 2009-01-05 23:27:27

installed it all xfs

Ranguvar · 2009-01-06 00:34:38

I'm going to re-doing my partitions soon... ext2 for /boot (no need for a journal on a tiny FS, it's a waste), Reiser4 for / (it handles small files extremely well - better than ext4, has on-the-fly compression without sacrificing speed, has been working for two years now, my root is actually fairly small, so worst case Reiser4 support in patches starts to die, I can fairly easily move to another FS - and also not being able to shrink the partition is not a big deal... not ReiserFS because Reiser4 actually seems more stable and is a big improvement), ext4 for /home (for a partition several hundred gigabytes large, I would never go with any FS that cannot be shrunk, or doesn't have an obviously bright future - it's a pain in the butt to switch filesystems on something so massive... also, I'm not likely to work with a lot of small files in my home partition, where Reiser4 would help), and that's about it.

Obviously, needs vary. I've heard XFS is good for large files, JFS is very low-CPU and still quite fast, ext3 is probably the most tested when you need journaling, and there are even others.

Last edited by Ranguvar (2009-01-06 00:35:59)

Convergence · 2009-02-09 01:02:53

sokuban wrote:

ext3 is the filesystem that the average person uses. If you are new to Linux, this is probably your best bet. I use this for / and /home.
ext4 is the next version of ext3 that supports all these good things. It is new, so it might be a little unstable, but I haven't heard any horror stories. Remember if you use ext4 you can't use it for your /boot partition unless you have the new grub.
reiserfs is good at dealing with lots of small little files. I use this on /var since I hear the pacman database has lots of small little files. I'm not sure if this is the smartest thing to do or not. Mr. Reiser went to jail for murdering his wife, so work on it and its successor is poor.
xfs is good at dealing with big multimedia files. Whatever you do, /do not/ have /var on an xfs partition.

I agree. I'm not sure if are saying this because of performance problems with pacman, but that's why I won't be using xfs on / again.

Sirius: How is ext4 with pacman inquiries? I read somewhere that pacman and reiser got along especially well (more or less instant inquiry results for me) so I would hate to leave that behind if ext4 doesn't do as well. I've only installed my arch root partition on two FS's; one was reiser, the other was XFS. pacman performance was unbearable under XFS, so I switched back to reiser.

Now I've moved my /home partition to ext4, and am considering doing it with my / and /usr/local partitions. /boot can stay as ext2 of course.

Last edited by Convergence (2009-02-09 01:10:11)

Xiong Chiamiov · 2009-02-09 11:16:21

Cew27 wrote:

installed it all xfs

You apparently did not read this:

sokuban wrote:

Whatever you do, /do not/ have /var on an xfs partition.

XFS is great for large files, but there are a great many small files on your system, in particular in /var, where pacman stores its sync database. Pacman queries will probably be as slow as the JRE if you keep it that way.

Full_Metal_Yakuza · 2009-02-09 14:04:05

It's fine to choose either ext3 or reiser-generally there won't be mistake
Reiser is a little bit faster when dealing with small files and recovery/check of partiton is faster(eg during power loss)
Also reserved space for file system is smaller for raiser
On the other hand-ext3 is consider to be more robust and stable but there are no strong evidence that is actually more stable than reiser
Sorry for bad english

Last edited by Full_Metal_Yakuza (2009-02-09 14:05:07)

userlander · 2009-02-09 14:29:09

I switched all my data partitions to XFS after seeing the speed increase on my server, especially for large files. I still use ext3 for / because it seems to work fine, and basically I'm too chicken to use anything else. I used to use reiserfs, but I had a recovery problem once after a power failure and ever since then I've just used ext3. I still think reiserfs is a little faster, though, but personally I just feel safer with ext3. I can't wait to see what ext4 is like.

Inxsible · 2009-02-09 18:15:23

I use
/boot - Ext2
/var - reiserfs
/home- Ext3
/ - Ext3

I will soon change the ext3s to ext4, but /boot will still be ext2 -- no need for journaling there. pacman does seem to be faster than when I did not have a separate /var.

I don't use xfs and jfs only because they cannot be resized. also if you dual boot with windows, ext3 partitions are readable via fs-driver. I am not sure if xfs and jfs have something similar

eerok · 2009-02-09 20:37:18

I'm gradually migrating everything to ext4 with ext2 /boot. All I have right now on ext4 are my new and improved Arch Openbox partition and my even newer Arch KDE4.2 partition. Next will be Sidux. I'll probably have a bit of a wait for Debian Testing---I don't think ext4 has arrived there yet. As for my shared data and backup partitions, well, they will be last once I'm sure all is solid.

Prior to this my favorite was jfs.

briest · 2009-02-10 19:52:22

Inxsible wrote:

I don't use xfs and jfs only because they cannot be resized.

XFS can be expanded online and its performance with many small files can be significantly improved; for me, most notable were lazycount and increasing logbufs.

fukawi2 · 2009-02-10 22:37:57

briest wrote:

Inxsible wrote:
I don't use xfs and jfs only because they cannot be resized.
XFS can be expanded online and its performance with many small files can be significantly improved; for me, most notable were lazycount and increasing logbufs.

So can JFS.. After resizing the container (RAID / LVM etc):

mount -o remount,resize /mnt/jfs_partition

Although I agree that it's a pain to not be able to shrink it

Arch Linux

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what filesystem

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