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#1 2009-10-19 18:35:30

fsckd
Forum Fellow
Registered: 2009-06-15
Posts: 4,173

ext4 setup suggestions, hints, comments

I'm planning to use ext4 for my new arch setup primarily because I dislike slow fscks. I have also heard that under certain situations ext4 is faster than ext2. I'll be trying it out with a couple of partitions and may be expand it to my data partitions later. Anyways, here is my initial planned setup.

/tmp [5 GiB] shared between multiple Linux distros
mkfs.ext4 -O '^has_journal'
mount -o 'noauto_da_alloc, noatime'
focus on speed, I could care less about file integrity between reboots as everything would be deleted anyways

/ [8 GiB] arch root
no special mkfs.ext4 options
mount -o 'nodelalloc, noatime'


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#2 2009-10-19 20:24:03

RetroX
Member
Registered: 2009-10-17
Posts: 106

Re: ext4 setup suggestions, hints, comments

ext3 and ext4 are additions to the original ext2; they are exactly the same, only with more features.

ext2 is the filesystem, with less features.  I suppose it's slightly faster, and better for some cases (for example, a /boot partition), but really, it doesn't matter.  I would rather sacrifice a small amount of speed for the extra features ext3 and ext4 provide rather than stick with ext2.
ext3 adds a journal to the file system.  I'd highly recommend ext3 at least on any OS or file storage partitions.
ext4 adds some more features to ext3, like extents, faster checks, and a few other small things.

Overall, I'd recommend ext4 in almost all cases.  However, on something like a /boot partition, I'd recommend ext2, and maybe ext3 for something like a /tmp partition.  Either way, you should probably choose ext4 for your install.

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#3 2009-10-19 21:58:44

fsckd
Forum Fellow
Registered: 2009-06-15
Posts: 4,173

Re: ext4 setup suggestions, hints, comments

Thanks for the suggestions. My partitions are currently ext3 and at 30+ GiB fsck takes a long time.

I was told that with delayed allocation and caching features, minus the journal, ext4 might be faster than ext2. I might try running some benchmarks myself to see how good it works. smile


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#4 2009-10-20 01:31:12

*david_a*
Member
Registered: 2009-06-19
Posts: 80

Re: ext4 setup suggestions, hints, comments

On my bad old machine, ext4 seems to be *much* faster than ext3. I don't know why - it may be something wrong with my machine - but frankly to me the reason doesn't make much difference. I've never used ext2 for anything other than a /boot partition, so can't comment on it.

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