Reiser4 to gentoo-dev-sources. Poll!

gentoo_lan · Posted: Thu Mar 03, 2005 7:08 am Post subject:

I was just wondering ciaranm when you thought Reiser 3.6 will be production ready if ever. I know you have a very low opinion of Reiser 4 is your opinion just as low of Reiser 3.6?

gcasillo · Posted: Thu Mar 03, 2005 7:16 am Post subject:

codergeek42 has it right. When the vanilla kernel supports it, its good to go. Until then, forget it.

There are things I can live without: experimental filesystems are among them. I recently downgraded all of my boxes (three at home, seven at work) from ~x86 keywords to non-keywords. Nothing but stable packages for me. Sanity has been restored, and productivity has risen.

Nothing against those on the bleeding edge. Just that I'd rather not have to manage issues like flaky filesystems because of mob rule. If those of you who desire it need the speed kick that reiserfs-4, you can always go your own way. Gentoo probably isn't what you're looking for.

Jake · Veteran Joined: 31 Jul 2003 Posts: 1132

TheCoop · Posted: Thu Mar 03, 2005 2:24 pm Post subject:

well, from what I can tell, the major thing about reiser4 is that its Different to the previous filesystems, and those differences break a few programs/kernel things. Do you think that the current filesystem way of doing things will last forever? Yes, reiser4 has a few bugs, but what software doesnt? (I cant comment on the non-x86 issues, as I dont have the necessary technical knowledge to do so). Just because its Different doesnt mean its Wrong or Broken.
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ciaranm · Posted: Thu Mar 03, 2005 2:28 pm Post subject:

TheCoop · Posted: Thu Mar 03, 2005 2:43 pm Post subject:

I wouldnt say utterly broken, reiser4 has a lot of new ideas that break some things. Maybe they would be better as a general fs-plugin (eg .tar-traversal, files sharing bits between themselves), but no other filesystem has the right hooks therefore they're reiser4-only. There are problems that can be fixes (O_DIRECTORY fr instance) and some more insidious, but overall Hans has some very nice and revolutionary ideas for filesystems. They could have been done better, but how else do you get change? Again, just because its Different doesnt mean its Wrong. You werent expecting the current design to last forever did you?
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ciaranm · Posted: Thu Mar 03, 2005 2:48 pm Post subject:

nife · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 24 Apr 2003 Posts: 87

firephoto · Posted: Thu Mar 03, 2005 4:22 pm Post subject:

What gets me is that it can't go into the kernel because it's "broke", but I can go through my kernel config and find a dozen or more options that are "broke" if one was to turn them on and I suspect this is why this options have a big "EXPERIMENTAL" next to them. Just because it's there doesn't mean you have to use it.

My feeling is that all the lack of love for reiser4 is from people who don't user reiserfs and in some way or another don't believe or support what Hans and namesys are doing.

It's pretty obvious that the gentoo-sources will never have a reiser4 patch and almost certainly there will never be a kernel in the portage tree that has a reiser4 patch. If the patches are buggy, and they don't apply cleanly, or it causes problems to the system even if you were to never enable any reiser4 options in the kernel then these would be good reasons to not have support but I don't think these are issues on newer kernels.

spb · Posted: Thu Mar 03, 2005 4:50 pm Post subject:

firephoto · Posted: Thu Mar 03, 2005 4:55 pm Post subject:

IWBCMAN · Guru Joined: 25 Jun 2002 Posts: 474

For what it's worth I have been using Reiser4 for almost a year on my main machine and 8 months on my laptop. Have never had any problems whatsoever-in my experience it belongs to the most stable fs's I have ever used. I am somewhat frustrated that it still does not support ACL's -and am eagerly awaiting this.

I do not run it on the production LTSP server that I administer. There has been a history of strange problems using Reiser3 with LTSP which is why I use ext3 for that server.

Although I am eagerly awaiting it's inclusion in the gentoo-sources kernel I expect a number of issues need to be ironed out prior to this happening. Andrew will likely put it into the kernel fairly soon-once this happens the *real* testing will begin-and with sufficent users the code should improve rapidly as it is exposed to the real world conditions. Hopefully once this transpires some of the realy extraodinary things which compose Reiser4 can be abstracted into the proper kernel vfs enabling all fs's to profit from the advances which it represents.

Even if it was in the kernel right now I would still hesitate to have it included in the gentoo-sources so long as it does not properly support ACL's and of course so long as there are outstanding bugs in it as regards x86-64 and other architectures.

I think it's a fair policy of gentoo-sources to demand that those fs's included properly support things like ACL's .

But then again the reason I like and exclusivley use Gentoo is that it gives me the option to do that which I want easily. There are several quality alternative kernels sources which do include it(Nitro, already mentioned)-I haven't used gentoo-sources for a long, long time and I can't honestly say I have missed it.

ninjabadger · Posted: Thu Mar 03, 2005 9:38 pm Post subject:

There is debate as to how stable it is,

If the devs put it in gentoo-dev-sources they will have to support it and answer bug fixes on it etc.

This takes away their valuable time from doing other gentoo stuff

Its enough that other sources have it and you can patch it yourself anyway.

Once its been through Morton then maybe, but i think the gentoo devs hav the right idea (as well as the right) here
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brjames · n00b Joined: 30 Sep 2003 Posts: 52

Glorandar

spb

firephoto · Posted: Fri Mar 04, 2005 12:22 am Post subject:

A snippet of the ntfs write support help from the kernel gives a little history on what kind of file systems got included in the kernel.

fuji · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 26 Apr 2002 Posts: 111

I wouldn't touch Reiser4 at all... the only thing Reiser 3 touches is /usr/portage -- IE: something that is easily replaced.

If people want Reiser4, they're probably preformance guys so why would they use gentoo-sources which has now become a stable patchset as opposed to the preformance patchset which it once was. Those guys should be using some of the other sets like Nitro or love or patch their own.

There's no reason for the gentoo-dev-sources to support reiser4.
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petrjanda · Posted: Fri Mar 04, 2005 6:04 am Post subject:

I dont care, but then Im not gonna touch Reiser4 again for at least a year. Its too unstable. Its probably not gonna make the vanilla source for another year and half.
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firephoto · Posted: Mon Mar 14, 2005 5:11 am Post subject:

Maybe someone should tell Eugenia over at OSNews about reiser4 so she can add it to her list of things that users want but deaf devs ignore.

... or not.

just gettin' your goats. :lol: