The Filesystem choice thread

Message

absinthe · Post by **absinthe** » Fri Dec 20, 2002 5:50 am

huhmz wrote:And I head ReiserFS 4 is going to be 100% (in some cases) faster.

I'll believe that when I see it. Until then, it's bullshit.

markmm1975 · Post by **markmm1975** » Sun Dec 29, 2002 4:40 pm

I had problems XFS so , Data Loss and had to reinstall Linux. So I wont be using it again, Reiserfs is flawless and alot faster than XFS with small meduim files. However with larger files XFS is very fast but not much use when it randomly erased your harddisk.

Lovechild · Post by **Lovechild** » Sun Dec 29, 2002 5:05 pm

I have my /home on a Reiser4 partition now... lemme know how and what you need tested.. I would be happy to back it up and switch FS' around a bit...

ghetto · Post by **ghetto** » Mon Jan 06, 2003 5:12 pm

I have my /home on a Reiser4 partition now... lemme know how and what you need tested.. I would be happy to back it up and switch FS' around a bit...

ok lets see some before and after 'hdparm -Tt' with reiser3 or at least an "after switching to reiser4.."
What sort of hd is it anyway..
and finally how did you get reiser4 on your system?

pilla · Post by **pilla** » Mon Jan 06, 2003 5:16 pm

I don't think that hdparm uses the fs structure to access the disk... I think it uses direct access to sectors.

ghetto wrote:
I have my /home on a Reiser4 partition now... lemme know how and what you need tested.. I would be happy to back it up and switch FS' around a bit...

ok lets see some before and after 'hdparm -Tt' with reiser3 or at least an "after switching to reiser4.."
What sort of hd is it anyway..
and finally how did you get reiser4 on your system?

ghetto · Post by **ghetto** » Mon Jan 06, 2003 6:24 pm

hdparm can measure how long it takes to read and write to the disk so if the filesystem is more responsive it should do this quicker I think.
I guess I could be wrong but it doesnt make much sence to me if i am.

pilla · Post by **pilla** » Mon Jan 06, 2003 6:38 pm

From man hdparm:

hdparm provides a command line interface to various hard disk ioctls
supported by the stock Linux ATA/IDE device driver subsystem.

Have you noticied that you can use hdparm with /dev/hda, which is only a device and not a partition? From that fact and from that sentence from the manual I can only but think it does not use the underlying file system drivers. It directly accesses the disk using ioctl calls.

ghetto · Post by **ghetto** » Mon Jan 06, 2003 10:00 pm

point taken

So far is it living up to the hype? Can you tell us anything you've noticed.

Im expecting great things this summer:
1)reiser4
2)linux-2.6

It should really be interesting

Lovechild · Post by **Lovechild** » Mon Jan 06, 2003 10:14 pm

ghetto wrote:
I have my /home on a Reiser4 partition now... lemme know how and what you need tested.. I would be happy to back it up and switch FS' around a bit...

ok lets see some before and after 'hdparm -Tt' with reiser3 or at least an "after switching to reiser4.."
What sort of hd is it anyway..
and finally how did you get reiser4 on your system?

Hehe, I patched the 2.5.53 kernel and compiled the userspace tools (had to hack the configure file a bit..

But here's the bad news after a reboot I lost permissions on my /home partition.. so benchmarking is useless so long as the filesystem has these kinds of bugs.. it's very betaish.. but it seems faster (more responsive at least)

Zu` · Post by **Zu`** » Tue Jan 07, 2003 3:11 am

klimg wrote:I had a very specific problem with ext3.When I download a file with mldokey it all gets split up in 9mb pieces.When I try to write this to a CD at 32X I get constant buffer underruns and a effective speed of about 8X.I did throw a JFS filesystem on there and now the buffer underruns are gone (min. buffer fill 98%) and speed average is about 22X.Seems to be pretty fast in piecing stuff together.

JFS is idd very fast, perhaps faster than XFS. I switched from ext3 to JFS, about four months ago. I've been using it on all partitions except /boot (which is still ext3 -- but rarely mounted) since then. No problems at all, no extra kernel patches (it's in 2.4.20 as well as in gentoo-sources) needed for JFS, and .. it's fast.

watersb · Post by **watersb** » Sat Jan 18, 2003 9:12 pm

Lovechild wrote: Hehe, I patched the 2.5.53 kernel and compiled the userspace tools (had to hack the configure file a bit..

That's some work! Great job!

Well, from reading kernel-traffic last week, I believe that many of the filesystems for the 2.5.x/2.6 kernel are being actively developed, and will have significantly better performance in some cases.

So I don't think it's just a Reiser4 thing. Well, to be sure, the Reiser4 code is more recent and is designed to be faster -- but can you test ext3 under 2.5.53 as well?

I cannot yet -- I use an encrypted root disk and can't quite yet figure out how to boot-mount it without using a /proc/sys/real-root-dev switch, which I don't think works post-2.4.x

watersb · Post by **watersb** » Sat Jan 18, 2003 9:22 pm

matthead wrote:I put together a feature comparison table, mostly for my own use. After seeing this thread, I'd like to share.

I'd love any feedback anyone would like to give.

Matt:

This is great. I find this very useful to show to co-workers etc.

I think that this should go into the official Gentoo Documentation -- I suggest that you contact the maintainers and see about getting it in there.

CoronaLover · Post by **CoronaLover** » Sun Jan 19, 2003 2:23 pm

Dont bother with Reiser4 yet, its extremely unstable.
I tried to install a gentoo system on it once, locked up before it could even finish bootstrap...

bdonlan · Post by **bdonlan** » Tue Jan 21, 2003 1:51 pm

eivinn wrote:Hi,

I have now got internet back up and am planning to install Gentoo 1.4rc1.
Therefore I am wondering if it's best to use Ext3 or XFS. I am the "only" real user of the computer and use it for developing C++, Java programs and also a bit of gaming (GF4). What is faster, what is more reliable?

Thanks for any short explanation

I have lost two hdds to xfs; it relies on its journal exclusively. There is no recovery program.

bsolar · Post by **bsolar** » Thu Jan 30, 2003 1:12 pm

To the best of my knowledge, you can't *directly* convert a filesystem from one type, but instead you have to move all of your data somewhere, reformat, and move your data back.

This isn't hard though, if you have enough space on another (empty) partition.

For instance, if I want to change my /dev/hda3 partition to JFS (and assuming it's my root partition), I'd mount my /dev/hda4 partition to /backup/, then use the following command:
Code:

cd /
tar lcf - .|(cd /backup; tar xpvf - )

Assuming I remembered the command correctly (99.9% sure), this will make an exact copy of your root partition in your /dev/hda4 partition (and you can watch as it does it, that's what the "v" will do).

Now, you can cd into /backup, chroot, edit your config files (most importantly your /etc/fstab) and reflect the changes in your bootloader (telling it to boot your /dev/hda4 partition as your root) and then reboot.

Then you can format /dev/hda3 as you like, mount it, and repeat the process to make it your root again.

And, of course, any other empty partition will do - it could even be on another hard drive. I hope this helps if you don't find any slicker way to convert your file system type.
_________________
-=Miles Stoudenmire=-

To avoid to modify the boot configuratio it's possible to use the Gentoo installation cd, I think. Just remember to edit /etc/fstab to reflect the fs changes.

really · Post by **really** » Sat Feb 01, 2003 8:23 pm

i had no problems with reiserfs sience i tested it (last year in april, running stable still, a couple of reboots without shuting down properly (my sister. she thinks she dosnet need to shut it down properly voz it works always >:( ).
xfs on the other hand was kinda slow.
i have reiserfs on my / and ext3 on /home and /boot
i have ext3 coz i only have music and such things on /home /usr on the other hands is more acctive.

Loke^ · Post by **Loke^** » Tue Feb 04, 2003 3:09 pm

Well that does it, im reinstalling my laptop with Gentoo and ReiserFS! :]
Im sick entired of Debian now.
Ill be back with my reflections on ReiserFS later

OddFox · Post by **OddFox** » Wed Feb 05, 2003 4:34 am

ReiserFS w/the noatime and notail flags is speedy for me.

I personally have no need for ext3's greatest feature -- compatability. And XFS/JFS still need working on for me to be confident with them.

cbreaker · Post by **cbreaker** » Fri Feb 07, 2003 11:51 am

You can also use cpio to make a nice filesystem mirror. Guarenteed to be quicker then tar, but you'll need more space.

As far as filesystems, I've used ReiserFS and ext3. I've had problems with neither. I've never noticed one to be quicker then the other on a desktop machine that's not doing file system benchmarks all day.

I think the real performance issues will come into play in a demanding server environment. For the desktop, ext3/reiserfs are both fine.

die_vms_die · Post by **die_vms_die** » Mon Mar 03, 2003 5:51 am

Currently using ReiserFS on my pc, and ext3 an iBook.

edoloughlin · Post by **edoloughlin** » Wed Mar 05, 2003 5:25 pm

In http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?p=154099#154099:

huhmz wrote:XFS lagged my computer under very heavy diskusage, ie copying files and running SQL with lots of inserts.

I've been running with XFS for about six months and I've been wondering about serious slowdowns when a process is doing a lot of disk io. Has anyone else seen this with XFS? Is it time to switch?

Exigentsky · Post by **Exigentsky** » Mon Mar 17, 2003 1:25 am

Check out this page: http://www.namesys.com/v4/v4.html A very long detailed reding, for all the ReiserFS sckeptics.

kamikaz3 · Post by **kamikaz3** » Mon Mar 17, 2003 8:07 am

I have Reiserfs running on 3 gentoo boxes
No problems so far, and it's faster then ext3
(but I never used ext 3 under gentoo, maybe it's the gentoo part that makes things faster

)

Oubliete · Post by **Oubliete** » Wed Mar 19, 2003 8:15 pm

I've been using JFS since early beta a few years ago... Never had a problem with it yet.

Vagabond · Post by **Vagabond** » Sun Mar 23, 2003 5:09 pm

Hmm, when I installed Gentoo I picked ext3 because it seems tough against data corruption and because I'd used it before. After reading this thread I'm tempted to give ReiserFS a shot because I like optimising the hell out of my gentoo box, Having to reformat the partition is the only thing stopping me, its such a pain to move everything across and then move it back, I'd have to do some serious partiton reorganising to have anough space. I'd like to reorganise my partitons anyway so I may do it soon.

Vag

The Filesystem choice thread

Re: Comparison Table

Re: The Filesystem choice thread (was: XFS or Ext3)

depends on arch

XFS and lag.

Reiser FileSystem 4 Will Be Released Early July

JFS