On Thu, 28 Feb 2002, Oliver Thieke wrote: > Just a short statement in LSAG: "There is usually > little point in using many different filesystems. > Currently, ext2 is the most popular one, and it > is probably the wisest choice. (...) This needs to > be decided on a case-by-case basis." > Looks a little bit outdated...
It is outdated. At this time I would not recommend ext2 over any of the other filesystems. This was different six months ago when I experienced lots of filesystem corruption when experimenting with ReiserFS and ext3. > > The purpose of the m8.1 will primarily be: > Gaining experience. It will serve as a workstation > and server. "Areas" to be included: Apache, samba, > NFS, mysql, postgresql, networking tools, developing > and the usual KDE, internet & office stuff (no fancy > multi-media stuff, mp3 or the like). And later maybe > oracle 9i personal edition... Unless you're doing some heavy disk i/o, I doubt that the differences between the filesystems will matter much. ReiserFS did have some problems exporting NFS, but these matters seem to be taken care of in recent distributions. If you plan to run a heavy db server also consider using the rawdisk options with Oracle. You'll lose the ability to backup with cp or tar from the db files, but gain several things including speed and a little more data integrity in the event of a crash. > > On the IBM-DeveloperWorks-Site (in general a very > nice source for tutorials on lx, java, xml,...) I found > a series of articles by Daniel Robbins dealing with > the new array of filesystems for the 2.4 kernel. > > According to the IBM author those FS's show the > different advantages and diadvantages: > > ReiserFS > + better in handling small files (< 4 k) > - eventually performance loss with reading large mail > directories > - poor sparse file performance > - NFs compatibility not so good Add also that ReiserFS is integrated into the stock kernel. A disadvantage is that ReiserFS does not guarantee that your files are intact and contain valid data. > > ext3 > + easys transition from ext2 > + backward compatible to ext2 > + supposed to be very reliable > - slightly "slower" than XFS/reiserFS > > XFS > + speedy on large files > + efficient disk accesses > - slower deletes > > Robbins' recommendation: "Those who were looking for > raw performance generally leaned towards ReiserFS, > while those more interested in meticulous data integrity > features preferred ext3. However, with the release of XFS > for Linux, things have suddenly become much more confusing." > > I'm still not sure which fs design to choose. > Should all partitions have the same fs including > /boot and / ? Which one ? I always put /boot separately. ReiserFS is supposed to be faster if if manages the entire disk, so seems to be better suited for home environments. The partitions do not have to be the same fs type, but I don't see any advantage in choosing different ones for each. > Do you, out there, have any hands-on recommendations for > this purpose ? My experience has been with ReiserFS and XFS. ReiserFS was easier to setup, but this was primarily because XFS (at the time) was not in the stock distribution. I ran XFS on a RedHat 7.1 install that required creating a separate iso disk from sgi then using their installer instead of RedHat's. I've not tried it with Mandrake yet. I have lost filesystems under ReiserFS, but these were early development versions. The current version with the 2.4.17 kernel on a Mandrake 8.0 system has been running fine for several months. > Experience with the reliability, recoverability and > compatibility of the various fs' ? > Any known problem areas for the three fs ? With ext3 I had problems with the fs reverting back to ext2. I did not get around to determining why it reverted -- perhaps a module didn't load correctly. Only other thing I can add is to be careful when building your kernel or initrd and make sure that the correct options are selected. No big deal if you have a backup kernel, but I made the mistake of blasting an old kernel before testing the new and had to use a rescue disk to make my system bootable again. > > Thanx in advance from Berlin > > Oliver > > > > BTW - this is a very nice mailing list. Not too much > traffic. Hence you still can follow all threads and > learn a lot :-). > > >
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