Re: which to use: ext3, JFS, XFS, ReiserFS?
On Sat, Jan 19, 2008 at 07:22:40PM -0800, Joe Brenner wrote: Douglas A. Tutty [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Reiserfs = designed by one person who has had some kind of problems (I haven't looked into it). If damage occurs (e.g. unclean shutdown), may not be able to fix the damage and loses data. I've been using resierfs for some time (including on a flaky laptop) and I've never seen that problem come up. As for the reliability of reiserfs: haven't had any problems with it myself. It's hard for me to see how you can sort out anecdotal evidence on issues like this: file system failures are rare enough that no one person's experience is worth all that much (unless you've been administering clusters of hundreds of machines with a mixture of different file systems...). For me, its not anecdotal. I switched to ReiserFS from ext3 when I was having troubles with ext2/3 fsck messing up. It turned out later to be a bug that was fixed. In the mean time, ReiserFS also messed up (as in lost important data in-between daily backups). I then switched to JFS and had absolutely no problems. I switched back to ext3 based on the advise of the JFS utils maintainer and, second-hand, IBM. Doug. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: which to use: ext3, JFS, XFS, ReiserFS?
On Saturday 19 January 2008, Joe Brenner wrote: Douglas A. Tutty [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Reiserfs = designed by one person who has had some kind of problems (I haven't looked into it). If damage occurs (e.g. unclean shutdown), may not be able to fix the damage and loses data. I've been using resierfs for some time (including on a flaky laptop) and I've never seen that problem come up. I have. Multiple times on multiple partitions. Rebooting with a disk, and fsck.reiserfs did the trick, but it's annoying. Switched all of my boxen to ext3 after that happening a few dozen times. ext3 on the same disk, for double the amount of time r3 was on there has never had an issue with the same usage. As for Hans Reiser's personal problems: there are programmers at Namesys working on both reiser 3 and 4 while Reiser is unavailable. It's hardly a reason to avoid the relatively mature reiser 3. r3 is mature and only huge bug fixes go in. r4 is being worked on, but not rabbidly, like it used to be. ext3-4 are backwards compatible, so you can easily swap to 4 (but not back, from what I hear). You cannot do this with an upgrade of r3-r4. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: which to use: ext3, JFS, XFS, ReiserFS? [Was: new user question: debian on a Thinkpad T61]
On Sat, 19 Jan 2008 06:47:29 +0900 David [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Ext3 is best if you are dealing with a mixture of both and has the added security factor of defaulting to Ext2 if it fails. Although I have never had reason to find out. I'm in the habit of using buggy and crash-prone hardware D.on't know why; I guess I just don't like buying new hardware, am too lazy to haul faulty stuff back to the store, and don't mind the occasional cold reboot. Anyway, while I often had minor and rather harmless corruption on ext2 systems from these shutdowns, I've never had any issues after switching to ext3. Recovering journal... and that's it. Same for USB (and encrypted) disks that I often forget to properly unmount. Don't know anything about other systems, but also see no reason to try them out. --D. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Re: which to use: ext3, JFS, XFS, ReiserFS? [Was: new userquestion: debian on a Thinkpad T61]
Александър Л. Димитров wrote: Quoth Hugo Vanwoerkom: ext2. Never have used any other. I seriously hope that this was a joke... Maybe it was, but I never used anything but ext2 either, and that is no joke. It has worked fine for many years. I often considered upgrading to ext3, but so far I've never taken this step. I expect this is the same for many users of old. I am especially put off by the Wikipedia article on ext3. It gives a rather long list of disadvantages. One of them (No checksumming in journal) even sounds pretty frightening. The list of advantages is very short, and they are mostly advantages over Reiserfs and other non-ext2 systems, not advantages over ext2. But sometimes bugs in applications can cause a complete freeze of X, incl. keyboard and mouse. It happens to me about once a year, unfortunately also yesterday evening. In such a case there is nothing you can do but pull the plug. Then when you reboot, all sorts of alarming messages appear. By invoking fsck one can normally get the system to boot again, but there may be side-effects (e.g. my old iceweasel history was gone after the reboot yesterday). So now I am more or less ready to take the plunge. But I would still like some advice. 1. Is it true that ext3 always lets you recover smoothly after a freeze and pull the plug, or after a power cut? Or are there still ifs and buts? 2. Is significant room on the disk (or partition) taken by the journal? By how much can I expect the disk capacity to be reduced? 3. It is said ext3 is slow. Does this apply to writing only, or also to reading? I.e., is there a danger that when I play a film with mplayer, I'll get the dreaded message Your system is TOO SLOW to play this? 4. I have my whole Linux system, apart from swap (i.e. the root, and everything that branches off it, like /boot, /var, /usr) just on one logical partition. Can I still convert to ext3, possibly by using a Knoppix or Ubuntu CD-ROM to boot from? 5. Where can I find reliable, step-by-step instructions for the conversion? There are several such instruction sites on the Web, but I am not sure they always agree. PS: Kernel is 2.6.20-1-686 Regards, Jan -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: which to use: ext3, JFS, XFS, ReiserFS? [Was: new userquestion: debian on a Thinkpad T61]
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On 01/19/08 07:35, Jan Willem Stumpel wrote: Александър Л. Димитров wrote: Quoth Hugo Vanwoerkom: ext2. Never have used any other. I seriously hope that this was a joke... Maybe it was, but I never used anything but ext2 either, and that is no joke. It has worked fine for many years. I often considered upgrading to ext3, but so far I've never taken this step. I expect this is the same for many users of old. I am especially put off by the Wikipedia article on ext3. It gives a rather long list of disadvantages. One of them (No checksumming in journal) even sounds pretty frightening. The list of advantages is very short, and they are mostly advantages over Reiserfs and other non-ext2 systems, not advantages over ext2. But sometimes bugs in applications can cause a complete freeze of X, incl. keyboard and mouse. It happens to me about once a year, unfortunately also yesterday evening. In such a case there is nothing you can do but pull the plug. Then when you reboot, all sorts of alarming messages appear. By invoking fsck one can normally get the system to boot again, but there may be side-effects (e.g. my old iceweasel history was gone after the reboot yesterday). So now I am more or less ready to take the plunge. But I would still like some advice. 1. Is it true that ext3 always lets you recover smoothly after a freeze and pull the plug, or after a power cut? Or are there still ifs and buts? There are very few always. Except always make backups. But I've never lost anything to a crash. 2. Is significant room on the disk (or partition) taken by the journal? By how much can I expect the disk capacity to be reduced? 1%, maybe. Only significant if you are running low on a disk. 3. It is said ext3 is slow. Does this apply to writing only, or also to reading? I.e., is there a danger that when I play a film with mplayer, I'll get the dreaded message Your system is TOO SLOW to play this? Slower. But it's been *MANY* years since I've gotten that kind of message. 4. I have my whole Linux system, apart from swap (i.e. the root, and everything that branches off it, like /boot, /var, /usr) just on one logical partition. Can I still convert to ext3, possibly by using a Knoppix or Ubuntu CD-ROM to boot from? Sure. 5. Where can I find reliable, step-by-step instructions for the conversion? There are several such instruction sites on the Web, but I am not sure they always agree. man tune2fs is all you need. Specifically, option -j. It's that simple. PS: Kernel is 2.6.20-1-686 Doesn't matter. - -- Ron Johnson, Jr. Jefferson LA USA I'm not a vegetarian because I love animals, I'm a vegetarian because I hate vegetables! unknown -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFHkgq+S9HxQb37XmcRAhA6AKCj3tObXZsPFDbe/bqUlFtBdPrxaQCg7c1B OmgwkbCY0p+LdoRyfYR40To= =7hI5 -END PGP SIGNATURE- -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: which to use: ext3, JFS, XFS, ReiserFS?
Douglas A. Tutty wrote: On Fri, Jan 18, 2008 at 04:11:17PM -0500, Jimmy Wu wrote: I am trying to decide on which file systems to use for a Debian install on a personal laptop. It's a Thinkpad T61 with one 160 GB HD. I've looked around on Google, and come up with a lot of frustratingly conflicting advice. For example, an article from debian-administration touts XFS as the best in performance. But other sites mention that XFS may be more vulnerable to corruption on a crash/power outage than the other file systems. Then, people disagree on the performance of ext3 vs ReiserFS. Part of the confusion is the religious nature of the issue, part is the changing nature and experience of the filesystems in question. Here's a summary (sorry, no references): ext2 = long-time default linux fs. bugs have been worked out. Inspired by UNIX ffs (fast filesystem) with decades of history. Note that decades ago, drives were puny compared to today. ext3 = ext2 + metadata(default) journaling. Therefore slower than ext2. Reiserfs = designed by one person who has had some kind of problems (I haven't looked into it). If damage occurs (e.g. unclean shutdown), may not be able to fix the damage and loses data. XFS = desiged by SGI for smooth data transfer of large image / multi-media files (streaming video editing) on IRIX (their in-house UNIX). Great for sequential access to large files. Origionally propriatary for Irix, ported to Linux. Irix is no more. I don't know who is following XFS to ensure problems don't arise. JFS = designed by IBM for large databases, focus on fast checks after an unclean shutdown to get the server back up fast. To do that safely, note that speed is less of an issue than for the target for XFS. It was origionally written for OS/2 and then ported by IBM for AIX (their in-house UNIX). I used to use JFS until a thread somewhere around 6 months ago when we heard from the Debian maintainer for the JFS utils that IBM had stopped active development and at that time only had one person watching JFS for bugs on a very part-time basis. That IBM employee said that he could no longer recommend JFS for production environments. After this, I changed back to ext3. In an attempt to get some definitive answers, I threw together some of the statements I've seen, and all I am asking for is verification (a simple true/false is enough for most of them). So, here goes: (1) ext3 mounts and unmounts slowly, resulting in increased boot times. Mounts of an intact filesystem should be visually instantaneous. If the filesystem was not cleanly shutdown, you should be worried more about data integrity than speed of cleaning. (2) Neither JFS nor XFS can be made smaller, although they can be extended if needed. Minor detail. How many times do you try to shrink a filesystem. If you do need to, make a tarball or, using LVM, make a new LV and copy the data over, then remove the old LV. (3) JFS performance degrades on larger filesystems, but is least CPU intensive for smaller file systems. Depends on what you mean by performance and what you mean by larger filesystems. The larger the filesystem, the larger the journal and the more backup superblocks that need to be kept in sync. (4) ReiserFS can be flaky on a system crash. ReiserFS is always flaky. (5) ReiserFS is the best choice for /var. I used ReiserFS for about a week before my system got corrupted and I had to reinstall. I wouldn't use it on anything. (6) On a continuum, XFS offers the best performance, ext3 offers the most data integrity / chances of recovering from a crash, and JFS is in the middle. Apples, Oranges, and Pears. (7) Mixing too many file systems in one system will degrade performance No. If you had a system for editing video, you could use ext2 except for, e.g. /var/tmp on which you could have XFS (especially on its own disk or raid0 array). (8) Is there any advantage to using ext2 for /boot rather than ext3? Only in once instance: where drive space is limited you need a separate /boot, using ext2 instead of ext3 saves the space for the journal. Since the kernel doesn't change that often, you could leave /boot mounted ro except when updating the kernel. In this case, a journal doesn't really help unless you get a crash in the midst of a kernel update. Bottom line for your situation: Use ext3. If you want the ability to change the size of partitions, use LVM. For a laptop, you may want to put everything in encrypted partitions (with a separate /boot). But all of that still gives me no reason to change all of my ext2 partitions to something else. Hugo -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: which to use: ext3, JFS, XFS, ReiserFS?
On Jan 19, 2008 7:17 AM, Hugo Vanwoerkom [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: ext3 = ext2 + metadata(default) journaling. Therefore slower than ext2. But all of that still gives me no reason to change all of my ext2 partitions to something else. ext3 isn't noticably slower for user-environments, you can convert to ext3 without reformatting, and ext2 has very poor crash recovery compared to 3. tune2fs -j device and it'll convert your ext2 to ext3. -- Paul Johnson [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Re: which to use: ext3, JFS, XFS, ReiserFS? [Was: new userquestion: debian on a Thinkpad T61]
On Jan 19, 2008 5:35 AM, Jan Willem Stumpel [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I am especially put off by the Wikipedia article on ext3. It gives a rather long list of disadvantages. One of them (No checksumming in journal) even sounds pretty frightening. The list of advantages is very short, and they are mostly advantages over Reiserfs and other non-ext2 systems, not advantages over ext2. ext2 and 3 are 100% identical save for the journal. ext2 is just as unsafe as ext3, with ext2 perhaps being less safe due to the total lack of journaling. That being said, I used to suffer unclean shutdowns all the time in the 90's (family members frobbing power switches wrecklessly) that ext2 would frequently lose data on, switching to ext3 stopped the data loss and extreme fsck times. 1. Is it true that ext3 always lets you recover smoothly after a freeze and pull the plug, or after a power cut? Or are there still ifs and buts? There are still if's and but's, but they're small and I've yet to experience them in the better part of a decade's use of ext3. 2. Is significant room on the disk (or partition) taken by the journal? By how much can I expect the disk capacity to be reduced? I personally don't remember the exact amount, but it is more or less statistically insignificant with modern drive sizes. 3. It is said ext3 is slow. Does this apply to writing only, or also to reading? Not sure how it's slow against perhaps the buggy and now unlikely to receive future development ReiserFS... I.e., is there a danger that when I play a film with mplayer, I'll get the dreaded message Your system is TOO SLOW to play this? No, that's a CPU features thing, IIRC. 4. I have my whole Linux system, apart from swap (i.e. the root, and everything that branches off it, like /boot, /var, /usr) just on one logical partition. Can I still convert to ext3, possibly by using a Knoppix or Ubuntu CD-ROM to boot from? You can, but it's generally easier to do it on the fly... tune2fs -j device; this can be done to mounted filesystems without consequence. 5. Where can I find reliable, step-by-step instructions for the conversion? There are several such instruction sites on the Web, but I am not sure they always agree. Step 1: Get root privileges. Step 2: Type tune2fs -j /dev/whatever Step 3: Remount the filesystem ext3... -- Paul Johnson [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Re: which to use: ext3, JFS, XFS, ReiserFS? [Was: new userquestion: debian on a Thinkpad T61]
On Sat, Jan 19, 2008 at 02:35:25PM +0100, Jan Willem Stumpel wrote: ... But sometimes bugs in applications can cause a complete freeze of X, incl. keyboard and mouse. It happens to me about once a year, unfortunately also yesterday evening. In such a case there is nothing you can do but pull the plug. Not true. Learn this: http://www.developertutorials.com/tutorials/linux/magic-sysrq-050503/page1.html I haven't had a post-freeze fsck since I started Alt-sysrq-s before pulling the plug. A signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Re: which to use: ext3, JFS, XFS, ReiserFS? [Was: new userquestion: debian on a Thinkpad T61]
On Jan 19, 2008 9:39 AM, Andrew Sackville-West [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Sat, Jan 19, 2008 at 02:35:25PM +0100, Jan Willem Stumpel wrote: ... But sometimes bugs in applications can cause a complete freeze of X, incl. keyboard and mouse. It happens to me about once a year, unfortunately also yesterday evening. In such a case there is nothing you can do but pull the plug. Not true. Learn this: http://www.developertutorials.com/tutorials/linux/magic-sysrq-050503/page1.html I haven't had a post-freeze fsck since I started Alt-sysrq-s before pulling the plug. If X eats it hard enough (and it does for me about once a month to once every two weeks), the crash will make the magic system request key not so magical. -- Paul Johnson [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Re: Re: which to use: ext3, JFS, XFS, ReiserFS? [Was: new userquestion: debian on a Thinkpad T61]
Paul Johnson wrote: Step 1: Get root privileges. Step 2: Type tune2fs -j /dev/whatever Step 3: Remount the filesystem ext3... I did this, and indeed it was amazingly easy. On a partition of about 24 G (well, this is an *old* disk!) a file /.journal of 128 M (indeed much less than 1%) was created instantaneously. Now mount -l shows that I have an ext3 system. What I did was (may have been over-cautious): Step 1: close all applications, close X, get into a console. Step 2: get root privileges. Step 3: close the SMB connection to my wife's Windows machine. Step 4: /etc/init.d/networking stop Step 5: edit /etc/fstab; change ext2 to ext3 for my root device (/dev/hda5 in my case). Step 6: type tune2fs -j /dev/hda5. The journal was created instantaneously (I'd expected this to take a long time. but it did not). Step 7: reboot. Some steps may have been unnecessary, but it seems I have a working ext3 system now. It is really easy. The real smoke test will come, of course, when I pull the plug. Will do this now; if you do not hear from me, the test will have failed. Thanks to all who responded! Regards, Jan -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: which to use: ext3, JFS, XFS, ReiserFS? [Was: new userquestion: debian on a Thinkpad T61]
Jan Willem Stumpel wrote: Some steps may have been unnecessary, but it seems I have a working ext3 system now. It is really easy. The real smoke test will come, of course, when I pull the plug. Will do this now; if you do not hear from me, the test will have failed. Thanks to all who responded! And it worked! I rudely pulled the plug when X and its apps were still active, and after restoring the voltage the system rebooted without any complaints. Hugo, you should convert to ext3 as well. Regards, Jan -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: which to use: ext3, JFS, XFS, ReiserFS? [Was: new userquestion: debian on a Thinkpad T61]
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On Saturday 19 January 2008, Jan Willem Stumpel was heard to say: Step 6: type tune2fs -j /dev/hda5. The journal was created instantaneously (I'd expected this to take a long time. but it did not). If I may interject, creating the journal just creates a blank file. - -- November 5th: $4.3Million Dollars In One Day December 16th: $6 Million Dollars In One Day http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxldrCsVByA -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (GNU/Linux) iQEVAwUBR5JTOi9Y35yItIgBAQK/LAf/QTy5cWkVBWx9Q7QRW24Y9GArU3kIX0Ec zDq4vi20ZPicykNBSamL/I8cP8bgpWCbTEFHg1p2L7FauY0UaJSFMYg9iNtc0W24 zOGdzZUAB80kmyK86M2EZPOLKbiDCaj93TX8yCo8/QMQ/0piSAi58aCTJAISOw5J 3gJtI74EDzTDUeVvdKymhVXp+yyrScafgf8lnMRw3FKpZsvdMq1RF715tPYNOjBn uBEO1DcWMqngTQwoK+jwLUaiwgj+ky/dh+HOTB0x98tXe+q72ie1Gc9Ye29TINjn Zpnp3zyYI82dU6WekxwS/VYLC20rsaXmkrh6QV9WI1hUg4B2A61dAg== =UqZ9 -END PGP SIGNATURE- -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: which to use: ext3, JFS, XFS, ReiserFS? [Was: new userquestion: debian on a Thinkpad T61]
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On 01/19/08 13:44, Curt Howland wrote: On Saturday 19 January 2008, Jan Willem Stumpel was heard to say: Step 6: type tune2fs -j /dev/hda5. The journal was created instantaneously (I'd expected this to take a long time. but it did not). If I may interject, creating the journal just creates a blank file. So when does the journaling begin? At remount? - -- Ron Johnson, Jr. Jefferson LA USA I'm not a vegetarian because I love animals, I'm a vegetarian because I hate vegetables! unknown -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFHkl0rS9HxQb37XmcRArcCAKCSC8u+lWAjPEa5gBwVIltZQ1EG8wCcDWYX lfGT7pnDqKh4DQiAPYhcQlo= =G+fp -END PGP SIGNATURE- -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: which to use: ext3, JFS, XFS, ReiserFS? [Was: new userquestion: debian on a Thinkpad T61]
Curt Howland wrote: If I may interject, creating the journal just creates a blank file. This would explain why creating the journal does not seem to take any time. But strings showed that there was a lot of stuff (at least lots of filenames) in it. Perhaps the journal is *created* as a blank file, and then some background process immediately begins to fill it? Anyway, whatever it does, it seems to be a very clever system. Regards, Jan -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: which to use: ext3, JFS, XFS, ReiserFS? [Was: new userquestion: debian on a Thinkpad T61]
On Sat, Jan 19, 2008 at 02:27:23PM -0600, Ron Johnson wrote: On 01/19/08 13:44, Curt Howland wrote: If I may interject, creating the journal just creates a blank file. So when does the journaling begin? At remount? Perhaps on the next write once it is mounted as ext3? When the journal is created, the filesystem is still mounted ext2 (if at all). Doug. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: which to use: ext3, JFS, XFS, ReiserFS? [Was: new userquestion: debian on a Thinkpad T61]
To the other Mr. Johnson, sorry for the double, I botched the reply/reply to list distinction there. On Jan 19, 2008 12:27 PM, Ron Johnson [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 01/19/08 13:44, Curt Howland wrote: On Saturday 19 January 2008, Jan Willem Stumpel was heard to say: Step 6: type tune2fs -j /dev/hda5. The journal was created instantaneously (I'd expected this to take a long time. but it did not). If I may interject, creating the journal just creates a blank file. So when does the journaling begin? At remount? IIRC, journaling begins at remount. If it happens before that, I never got the memo on the change. -- Paul Johnson [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: which to use: ext3, JFS, XFS, ReiserFS? [Was: new user question:
On Fri, Jan 18, 2008 at 05:32:25PM -0500, Allan Wind wrote: On 2008-01-18T14:05:25-0800, Alvin Oga wrote: (8) Is there any advantage to using ext2 for /boot rather than ext3? no to either /boot should not be a single partition by itself.. it is part of /bin, /lib, /sbin /etc ... which is the rootfs even if /boot is fine, if your rootfs is corrupt, you can't boot so there is no point to separating /boot ... we'll leave network boot, boooting off cd, and booting off usb stick for another ballgame Your analysis is correct. The only reason for having /boot on a separate partition is as a work-around for the (historical) 1024 cylinders / 504 MB limits of IDE. isn't busybox part of the initrd, can't you get you booting linux box to boot into busybox, thus all you need is a working /boot and a working kernel image and initrd. From here could rebuild/fix/investigate your system /Allan -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- The economy depends about as much on economists as the weather does on weather forecasters. -- Jean-Paul Kauffmann signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: which to use: ext3, JFS, XFS, ReiserFS? [Was: new userquestion: debian on a Thinkpad T61]
On Sun, 20 Jan 2008, Jan Willem Stumpel shared this with us all: --} So now I am more or less ready to take the plunge. But I would --} still like some advice. --} --} 1. Is it true that ext3 always lets you recover smoothly after a --} freeze and pull the plug, or after a power cut? Or are there --} still ifs and buts? snip --} 3. It is said ext3 is slow. Does this apply to writing only, or --} also to reading? I.e., is there a danger that when I play a --} film with mplayer, I'll get the dreaded message Your system is --} TOO SLOW to play this? I can answer these two from experiences of laptops and desktops. I have only ever used ext3 except on one occasion back in 2001 where I had one partition ReiserFS for a short time. It didn't give me any problem, but I didn't like the mix. Recovery of the ext3 has been brilliant in my experience on lappys and desktops. Recovery just happens in fact I would have to read up on fsck or whatever it's called. Power down, by accidentally pulling the plug, power down by bushfires burning the poles. No matter. Every recovery is clean, seems no matter how many applications were running when the energy dropped out. I don't use mplayer, but before we had a DVD player, used to watch DVD's on the lappy with Totem without any problems. Hope that helps. Charlie -- Registered Linux User:- 329524 ** Never doubt the potential of creative idleness being a way of life. Man was elevated from the barbarian state by those who were idle, but thought a lot. -anon Debian - Just the best way to do magic.
Re: which to use: ext3, JFS, XFS, ReiserFS?
Douglas A. Tutty [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Reiserfs = designed by one person who has had some kind of problems (I haven't looked into it). If damage occurs (e.g. unclean shutdown), may not be able to fix the damage and loses data. I've been using resierfs for some time (including on a flaky laptop) and I've never seen that problem come up. Comparing ext3 to reiserfs, version 3 (I haven't used 4 yet), there's one feature of reiserfs that I like quite a bit: the reported size of a directory has some relationship to how much the directory contains. Under ext3, two empty directories and a copy of the /bin directory look like this: /tmp/test: total used in directory 40 available 13126340 drwxr-xr-x 2 doom doom 4096 2008-01-19 18:40 empty_one drwxr-xr-x 2 doom doom 4096 2008-01-19 18:40 empty_two drwxr-xr-x 2 doom doom 4096 2008-01-19 18:42 bin_copy Under reiserfs, they look like this: /home/doom/End/Dust/Sound/test: total used in directory 7 available 909624 drwxr-xr-x 2 doom doom 48 2008-01-19 18:41 empty_one drwxr-xr-x 2 doom doom 48 2008-01-19 18:41 empty_two drwxr-xr-x 2 doom doom 2584 2008-01-19 18:43 bin_copy For desktop use, the performance benefits of one file system or another is not likely to be perceivable. However, reiserfs (and reiserfs alone, as I understand it) is optimized to handle large number of small files. Since I use mh for my mail (which stashes each mail message as an individual file) I feel a little better useing reiserfs... (For example, currently, the folder I refile debian-users mail to has over 5 files in it, and that's not the biggest one I have.). As for Hans Reiser's personal problems: there are programmers at Namesys working on both reiser 3 and 4 while Reiser is unavailable. It's hardly a reason to avoid the relatively mature reiser 3. As for the reliability of reiserfs: haven't had any problems with it myself. It's hard for me to see how you can sort out anecdotal evidence on issues like this: file system failures are rare enough that no one person's experience is worth all that much (unless you've been administering clusters of hundreds of machines with a mixture of different file systems...). -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: which to use: ext3, JFS, XFS, ReiserFS?
Joe Brenner wrote: Douglas A. Tutty [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Reiserfs = designed by one person who has had some kind of problems (I haven't looked into it). If damage occurs (e.g. unclean shutdown), may not be able to fix the damage and loses data. I've been using resierfs for some time (including on a flaky laptop) and I've never seen that problem come up. Have to agree, from my limited experience. I used reiserfs for about two and a half years with the Debian derivative, Libranet, sometime ago - therefore early in its development, and never had a problem. Regards, -- David Palmer Linux User - #352034 -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: which to use: ext3, JFS, XFS, ReiserFS? [Was: new user question: debian on a Thinkpad T61]
On Jan 18, 2008, at 1:11 PM, Jimmy Wu wrote: (4) ReiserFS can be flaky on a system crash. I haven't found it to be flaky on system crashes. I have found it to be extremely unforgiving of disk corruption and IDE bus problems. I was able to recover the data with reiserfsck, but it took a very long time. When it was done I had to sort through a lot of files with no names. This can happen to other filesystems, too, but Reiser is the only filesystem I've used where it's happened to every file on the system. Also, ReiserFS4 is not backwards compatible with ReiserFS3, making 3 a bit of an orphan. I no longer use ReiserFS for new systems because I figure 3 will eventually not be maintained, and I don't want to be forced to change whole filesystems when I do future kernel upgrades. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: which to use: ext3, JFS, XFS, ReiserFS? [Was: new user question: debian on a Thinkpad T61]
On Jan 18, 2008, at 4:45 PM, Jimmy Wu wrote: On Jan 18, 2008 4:27 PM, Damon L. Chesser [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: xfs sure does copy and delete really large files faster - I do use it for video at home. How big do files have to be before one starts to notice the advantages of XFS? In my experience, delete performance differences become noticeable when you get over 1 gigabyte. ext3 (and ext2) blocks *all* writes to the filesystem during deletes, and deleting multi-gigabyte files can take several seconds. This can be problematic in, for example, video recording applications; if a recording is in progress, you'll drop frames during the delete. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: which to use: ext3, JFS, XFS, ReiserFS?
On Jan 19, 2008, at 7:17 AM, Hugo Vanwoerkom wrote: But all of that still gives me no reason to change all of my ext2 partitions to something else. I decided to change the first time I had a server down for an hour because it was waiting for the on-boot fsck to finish... :) -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: which to use: ext3, JFS, XFS, ReiserFS? [Was: new user question: debian on a Thinkpad T61]
Jimmy Wu wrote: Hello, I am trying to decide on which file systems to use for a Debian install on a personal laptop. It's a Thinkpad T61 with one 160 GB HD. I've looked around on Google, and come up with a lot of frustratingly conflicting advice. For example, an article from debian-administration touts XFS as the best in performance. But other sites mention that XFS may be more vulnerable to corruption on a crash/power outage than the other file systems. Then, people disagree on the performance of ext3 vs ReiserFS. In an attempt to get some definitive answers, I threw together some of the statements I've seen, and all I am asking for is verification (a simple true/false is enough for most of them). So, here goes: (1) ext3 mounts and unmounts slowly, resulting in increased boot times. (2) Neither JFS nor XFS can be made smaller, although they can be extended if needed. (3) JFS performance degrades on larger filesystems, but is least CPU intensive for smaller file systems. (4) ReiserFS can be flaky on a system crash. (5) ReiserFS is the best choice for /var. (6) On a continuum, XFS offers the best performance, ext3 offers the most data integrity / chances of recovering from a crash, and JFS is in the middle. (7) Mixing too many file systems in one system will degrade performance (8) Is there any advantage to using ext2 for /boot rather than ext3? That's all I have for now. Thanks in advance for your help Jimmy -- Registered Linux User #454138 ext2. Never have used any other. Hugo -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: which to use: ext3, JFS, XFS, ReiserFS? [Was: new user question: debian on a Thinkpad T61]
Jimmy Wu wrote: Hello, I am trying to decide on which file systems to use for a Debian install on a personal laptop. It's a Thinkpad T61 with one 160 GB HD. Hello Jimmy, I have found: Xfs is best for large file sizes, if that's what you are dealing with - graphics, and the ilk; Reiserfs is best for smaller file sizes; Ext3 is best if you are dealing with a mixture of both and has the added security factor of defaulting to Ext2 if it fails. Although I have never had reason to find out. Regards, -- David Palmer Linux User - #352034 -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: which to use: ext3, JFS, XFS, ReiserFS? [Was: new user question: debian on a Thinkpad T61]
On 2008-01-18T16:11:17-0500, Jimmy Wu wrote: (1) ext3 mounts and unmounts slowly, resulting in increased boot times. I use ext3 on same hardware, and (clean) mounts do not take any significant time: [ 19.209034] EXT3-fs: mounted filesystem with ordered data mode. [ 19.209039] VFS: Mounted root (ext3 filesystem) readonly. [ 22.708260] EXT3 FS on sda1, internal journal [ 22.711688] usb 1-2: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice The entire boot process takes about a minute. (8) Is there any advantage to using ext2 for /boot rather than ext3? No. /Allan -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: which to use: ext3, JFS, XFS, ReiserFS? [Was: new user question: debian on a Thinkpad T61]
Wow, thanks for the many quick responses. I'm doing a group reply to the list by quoting everyone in one message. Not sure if this is top-posting, bottom-posting, or conversational-posting, but if this goes against mailing list etiquette, please tell me/flame me gently, and I won't do it again. On Jan 18, 2008 4:27 PM, Damon L. Chesser [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: This question is very close to what is the best religion for me? Haha, I like that :-) [...] Use ext3 and be done with it. Tried, true good rescue tools if you need them (I never have). IF you need the other fs, you would know it. Your killer app would tell you to use fs $X. For a home user, ext3 just works. Given this and the general gist of the other responses, I am thinking I will just go with ext3 for everything. On Jan 18, 2008 4:31 PM, Brian McKee [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Let me throw out a few more unsubstantiated statements. This is my opinion 'cause you asked for it I appreciate the input. Unless you have a real need for something special, just use ext3. It is the most widely used and supported, and has a good track record. None of the other file systems offer enough of an advantage for your kind of application to make them worth wandering off the main trail so to speak. As stated above, I guess I will stick with ext3. xfs sure does copy and delete really large files faster - I do use it for video at home. How big do files have to be before one starts to notice the advantages of XFS? I don't think, in the course of normal usage, that I will have any really huge files aside from a few isos, with the largest possible size being a 4GB DVD iso. Then again, isos are usually meant to be downloaded and burned, and possibly deleted later, not to be copied/shuffled around on an HD, so it probably won't be worth making an xfs partition for the isos, right? On Jan 18, 2008 6:10 PM, Александър Л. Димитров [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: What would you need FS-performance for? You're not going to host a data base, are you? If it's a personal laptop then performance differences between modern file systems won't be noticable at all. Don't mind those benchmarks, that's all hogwash. Yeah Reiser performs well in some benchmarks, but I've never noticed _any_ difference, instead that takes an awful amount of time to mount it after an unclean unmount. Well, if fs performance isn't noticeable, then I'll drop that as a criterion for choosing fs and go with ext3, which seems to be the most reliable. Why would you want to modify your laptop's partition table? Your better off not to misuse and abuse that small disk anyways, they tend to have rather short life spans. If I want to reinstall stuff, I may want to resize partitions. I didn't mention before that I have Windows Vista sitting in a 30 GB partition at the beginning of the drive. It came with the laptop, and I shrank it down using the built-in partition editor to the smallest size it would let me, and I don't plan on touching it unless there is some hardware issue or I run across Windows only software at school/work. For such a relatively high-end laptop, Vista runs sluggishly at best. There is no instant, responsive feel, as opening anything involves a slight delay. The first time Vista starts to give me problems, I'm going to wipe it and either shrink its partition and replace it with XP or possibly give all the space to Debian, repartitioning/reinstalling as necessary. I hope my HD won't complain about that. Sure. But who the hell uses JFS on a laptop? :-) Some of the forums google turned up had people who did, and who claimed it worked well (5) ReiserFS is the best choice for /var. Arguably, yes. My /var is still Reiser, too. So would you advise that I do the same? As previously stated, I am leaning towards keeping things simple and making everything, including /var ext3 to be consistent. (7) Mixing too many file systems in one system will degrade performance Yes. And there's no need mixing fs' on a laptop, either. See comment above on /var. Thanks again to everyone who responded! -- Jimmy Registered Linux User #454138
Re: which to use: ext3, JFS, XFS, ReiserFS? [Was: new user question:
On Fri, Jan 18, 2008 at 05:32:25PM -0500, Allan Wind wrote: On 2008-01-18T14:05:25-0800, Alvin Oga wrote: (8) Is there any advantage to using ext2 for /boot rather than ext3? no to either /boot should not be a single partition by itself.. it is part of /bin, /lib, /sbin /etc ... which is the rootfs even if /boot is fine, if your rootfs is corrupt, you can't boot so there is no point to separating /boot ... we'll leave network boot, boooting off cd, and booting off usb stick for another ballgame Your analysis is correct. The only reason for having /boot on a separate partition is as a work-around for the (historical) 1024 cylinders / 504 MB limits of IDE. just out of curiosity, what about the option of mounting /boot as read-only? I suppose some of that can be done with file permissions, but having to go through a remount of /boot before mucking about there, is probably a good thing. A signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: which to use: ext3, JFS, XFS, ReiserFS? [Was: new user question: debian on a Thinkpad T61]
Quoth Hugo Vanwoerkom: ext2. Never have used any other. I seriously hope that this was a joke... Aleks signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: which to use: ext3, JFS, XFS, ReiserFS? [Was: new user question: debian on a Thinkpad T61]
Quoth Jimmy Wu: I've looked around on Google, and come up with a lot of frustratingly conflicting advice. That's because file systems are Voodoo. Everyone wants to take part in the discussion, without anyone really understanding what they're talking about. For example, an article from debian-administration touts XFS as the best in performance. What would you need FS-performance for? You're not going to host a data base, are you? If it's a personal laptop then performance differences between modern file systems won't be noticable at all. Don't mind those benchmarks, that's all hogwash. Yeah Reiser performs well in some benchmarks, but I've never noticed _any_ difference, instead that takes an awful amount of time to mount it after an unclean unmount. But other sites mention that XFS may be more vulnerable to corruption on a crash/power outage than the other file systems. That is correct, and a reason to avoid it. Then, people disagree on the performance of ext3 vs ReiserFS. Then again, those people would even disagree on the current local weather. In an attempt to get some definitive answers, I threw together some of the statements I've seen, and all I am asking for is verification (a simple true/false is enough for most of them). So, here goes: (1) ext3 mounts and unmounts slowly, resulting in increased boot times. If you're fighting for seconds and nanoseconds... perhaps. I suggest you stop minding the seconds, though, it's of no good use. When do you need to mount that thing except at boot time? Right, never. And when do you boot? Right, you got a laptop with suspend/resume... my laptop's uptimes frequently make it from one minor kernel revision to the other. (2) Neither JFS nor XFS can be made smaller, although they can be extended if needed. Why would you want to modify your laptop's partition table? Your better off not to misuse and abuse that small disk anyways, they tend to have rather short life spans. (3) JFS performance degrades on larger filesystems, but is least CPU intensive for smaller file systems. Sure. But who the hell uses JFS on a laptop? (4) ReiserFS can be flaky on a system crash. Yes, it _will_ be flaky. I've never lost actual data, but that was due to caution and backups. (5) ReiserFS is the best choice for /var. Arguably, yes. My /var is still Reiser, too. (6) On a continuum, XFS offers the best performance, ext3 offers the most data integrity / chances of recovering from a crash, and JFS is in the middle. And what of all do you need? Right, data integrity. Firefox won't load faster if you're on Reiser4 or Reiser3. It will just be the same. On a laptop, you don't want to lose data, because you're not likely to make backups that often (imagine when you're away for two weeks, on the road with just your laptop). (7) Mixing too many file systems in one system will degrade performance Yes. And there's no need mixing fs' on a laptop, either. (8) Is there any advantage to using ext2 for /boot rather than ext3? There is no advantage in using /boot altogether. Really, use ext3 for /home and choose freely for the other stuff. You're free to experiment, but don't experiment with your personal data. Nothing but _HEADACHE_, pure old brain-torturing headache will come from losing personal data. Aleks signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: which to use: ext3, JFS, XFS, ReiserFS? [Was: new user question:
On Fri, 18 Jan 2008 17:32:25 -0500 Allan Wind [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 2008-01-18T14:05:25-0800, Alvin Oga wrote: (8) Is there any advantage to using ext2 for /boot rather than ext3? no to either /boot should not be a single partition by itself.. it is part of /bin, /lib, /sbin /etc ... which is the rootfs even if /boot is fine, if your rootfs is corrupt, you can't boot so there is no point to separating /boot ... we'll leave network boot, boooting off cd, and booting off usb stick for another ballgame Your analysis is correct. The only reason for having /boot on a separate partition is as a work-around for the (historical) 1024 cylinders / 504 MB limits of IDE. Actually it is still useful for cases where the root file system is not available until the initrd does it's magic, such as in the case of an encryped LVM volume with everything except /boot. Regards, Daniel -- And that's my crabbing done for the day. Got it out of the way early, now I have the rest of the afternoon to sniff fragrant tea-roses or strangle cute bunnies or something. -- Michael Devore GnuPG Key Fingerprint 86 F5 81 A5 D4 2E 1F 1C http://gnupg.org No more sea shells: Daniel's Webloghttp://cshore.wordpress.com signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: which to use: ext3, JFS, XFS, ReiserFS? [Was: new user question: debian on a Thinkpad T61]
Damon L. Chesser wrote: Jimmy Wu wrote: Wow, thanks for the many quick responses. I'm doing a group reply to the list by quoting everyone in one message. Not sure if this is top-posting, bottom-posting, or conversational-posting, but if this goes against mailing list etiquette, please tell me/flame me gently, and I won't do it again. no, responding like you did, is by def. bottom posting. ---comment- -response-- Technically, no. Bottom posting is where all the response is at the bottom of the reply. What Jimmy did goes by various names, interleaved posting being one of them. At any rate, Jimmy used the proper method for this list. -- Kent -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: which to use: ext3, JFS, XFS, ReiserFS? [Was: new user question:
hi ya Hugo Vanwoerkom wrote: Jimmy Wu wrote: (1) ext3 mounts and unmounts slowly, resulting in increased boot times. any journally fs will be slower than non-journaling fs ( ext2, dos, etc ) (2) Neither JFS nor XFS can be made smaller, although they can be extended if needed. i would tar up the current data and backup to dvd etc before blowing it up to extend the current fs into something bigger or smaller - thus the growing/shrinking feature is not an issue for my needs (3) JFS performance degrades on larger filesystems, but is least CPU intensive for smaller file systems. any journalling fs degrades as the fs gets larger some degrades faster than others --- formatting issues ... - journaling FS can format 1Terabyte in a flash - ext2 will take forever ( over a day or more ) - it will/might take forever ( over a day or more ) to format 500MB or 1 terabyte fs or larger - it will take forever ( even longer ) to restore the 1 terabyte of data - times are based on past experience for say P4-2Ghz w/ 1GB of memory or equivalent (4) ReiserFS can be flaky on a system crash. all journaling fs is flaky for system crash... - some can recover .. some cannot - you probably can't easily recreate the failure mode ( defective fs internals ) on different fs (5) ReiserFS is the best choice for /var. maybe .. maybe not (6) On a continuum, XFS offers the best performance, for performance and comparisons http://linux-sec.net/FS/#FS ext3 offers the most data integrity / chances of recovering from a crash, and JFS is in the middle. depends on the defect of the crash (7) Mixing too many file systems in one system will degrade performance duh ... :-) .. sorry couldn't resist and it will also confuse the admins when working on different servers, pcs (8) Is there any advantage to using ext2 for /boot rather than ext3? no to either /boot should not be a single partition by itself.. it is part of /bin, /lib, /sbin /etc ... which is the rootfs even if /boot is fine, if your rootfs is corrupt, you can't boot so there is no point to separating /boot ... we'll leave network boot, boooting off cd, and booting off usb stick for another ballgame c ya alvin -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: which to use: ext3, JFS, XFS, ReiserFS? [Was: new user question: debian on a Thinkpad T61]
Jimmy Wu wrote: Wow, thanks for the many quick responses. I'm doing a group reply to the list by quoting everyone in one message. Not sure if this is top-posting, bottom-posting, or conversational-posting, but if this goes against mailing list etiquette, please tell me/flame me gently, and I won't do it again. no, responding like you did, is by def. bottom posting. ---comment- -response-- and i just found out my left and right arrow above the ',' and '.' keys don't work, in fact none of my upper row keys work , zoinks. snip -- Damon L. Chesser [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: which to use: ext3, JFS, XFS, ReiserFS? [Was: new user question:
On 2008-01-18T14:05:25-0800, Alvin Oga wrote: (8) Is there any advantage to using ext2 for /boot rather than ext3? no to either /boot should not be a single partition by itself.. it is part of /bin, /lib, /sbin /etc ... which is the rootfs even if /boot is fine, if your rootfs is corrupt, you can't boot so there is no point to separating /boot ... we'll leave network boot, boooting off cd, and booting off usb stick for another ballgame Your analysis is correct. The only reason for having /boot on a separate partition is as a work-around for the (historical) 1024 cylinders / 504 MB limits of IDE. /Allan -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: which to use: ext3, JFS, XFS, ReiserFS? [Was: new user question: debian on a Thinkpad T61]
Jimmy Wu wrote: Hello, I am trying to decide on which file systems to use for a Debian install on a personal laptop. It's a Thinkpad T61 with one 160 GB HD. I've looked around on Google, and come up with a lot of frustratingly conflicting advice. For example, an article from debian-administration touts XFS as the best in performance. But other sites mention that XFS may be more vulnerable to corruption on a crash/power outage than the other file systems. Then, people disagree on the performance of ext3 vs ReiserFS. In an attempt to get some definitive answers, I threw together some of the statements I've seen, and all I am asking for is verification (a simple true/false is enough for most of them). So, here goes: (1) ext3 mounts and unmounts slowly, resulting in increased boot times. (2) Neither JFS nor XFS can be made smaller, although they can be extended if needed. (3) JFS performance degrades on larger filesystems, but is least CPU intensive for smaller file systems. (4) ReiserFS can be flaky on a system crash. (5) ReiserFS is the best choice for /var. (6) On a continuum, XFS offers the best performance, ext3 offers the most data integrity / chances of recovering from a crash, and JFS is in the middle. (7) Mixing too many file systems in one system will degrade performance (8) Is there any advantage to using ext2 for /boot rather than ext3? That's all I have for now. Thanks in advance for your help Jimmy -- Registered Linux User #454138 This question is very close to what is the best religion for me? However, I will try to answer it and avoid going into religion. Use ext3 and be done with it. Tried, true good rescue tools if you need them (I never have). IF you need the other fs, you would know it. Your killer app would tell you to use fs $X. For a home user, ext3 just works. If any other is a better performer and that bothers you, perhaps you might want to run Gentoo so you can optimize your kernel to save time. I am not trying to be a smart alec, just saying with all the time you might save, over the course of a year, you MIGHT be able to drink a beer. As far as I know, all major distros default to ext3. the rest are mostly for special purpose, ie, you run the data base Foo and they say to set up a raid 1 with a fs of JFS. I am not aware of any advantage over ext2 vs ext3 on /boot. as for ReiserFS, I would not put anything into it in light of Mr. Reiser's troubles. I do not know the future of it. Now I will read the rebuttals and learn! HTH! P.S If you want to know the best religion contact me off list (joking!, please don't!) -- Damon L. Chesser [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: which to use: ext3, JFS, XFS, ReiserFS?
On Fri, Jan 18, 2008 at 04:11:17PM -0500, Jimmy Wu wrote: I am trying to decide on which file systems to use for a Debian install on a personal laptop. It's a Thinkpad T61 with one 160 GB HD. I've looked around on Google, and come up with a lot of frustratingly conflicting advice. For example, an article from debian-administration touts XFS as the best in performance. But other sites mention that XFS may be more vulnerable to corruption on a crash/power outage than the other file systems. Then, people disagree on the performance of ext3 vs ReiserFS. Part of the confusion is the religious nature of the issue, part is the changing nature and experience of the filesystems in question. Here's a summary (sorry, no references): ext2 = long-time default linux fs. bugs have been worked out. Inspired by UNIX ffs (fast filesystem) with decades of history. Note that decades ago, drives were puny compared to today. ext3 = ext2 + metadata(default) journaling. Therefore slower than ext2. Reiserfs = designed by one person who has had some kind of problems (I haven't looked into it). If damage occurs (e.g. unclean shutdown), may not be able to fix the damage and loses data. XFS = desiged by SGI for smooth data transfer of large image / multi-media files (streaming video editing) on IRIX (their in-house UNIX). Great for sequential access to large files. Origionally propriatary for Irix, ported to Linux. Irix is no more. I don't know who is following XFS to ensure problems don't arise. JFS = designed by IBM for large databases, focus on fast checks after an unclean shutdown to get the server back up fast. To do that safely, note that speed is less of an issue than for the target for XFS. It was origionally written for OS/2 and then ported by IBM for AIX (their in-house UNIX). I used to use JFS until a thread somewhere around 6 months ago when we heard from the Debian maintainer for the JFS utils that IBM had stopped active development and at that time only had one person watching JFS for bugs on a very part-time basis. That IBM employee said that he could no longer recommend JFS for production environments. After this, I changed back to ext3. In an attempt to get some definitive answers, I threw together some of the statements I've seen, and all I am asking for is verification (a simple true/false is enough for most of them). So, here goes: (1) ext3 mounts and unmounts slowly, resulting in increased boot times. Mounts of an intact filesystem should be visually instantaneous. If the filesystem was not cleanly shutdown, you should be worried more about data integrity than speed of cleaning. (2) Neither JFS nor XFS can be made smaller, although they can be extended if needed. Minor detail. How many times do you try to shrink a filesystem. If you do need to, make a tarball or, using LVM, make a new LV and copy the data over, then remove the old LV. (3) JFS performance degrades on larger filesystems, but is least CPU intensive for smaller file systems. Depends on what you mean by performance and what you mean by larger filesystems. The larger the filesystem, the larger the journal and the more backup superblocks that need to be kept in sync. (4) ReiserFS can be flaky on a system crash. ReiserFS is always flaky. (5) ReiserFS is the best choice for /var. I used ReiserFS for about a week before my system got corrupted and I had to reinstall. I wouldn't use it on anything. (6) On a continuum, XFS offers the best performance, ext3 offers the most data integrity / chances of recovering from a crash, and JFS is in the middle. Apples, Oranges, and Pears. (7) Mixing too many file systems in one system will degrade performance No. If you had a system for editing video, you could use ext2 except for, e.g. /var/tmp on which you could have XFS (especially on its own disk or raid0 array). (8) Is there any advantage to using ext2 for /boot rather than ext3? Only in once instance: where drive space is limited you need a separate /boot, using ext2 instead of ext3 saves the space for the journal. Since the kernel doesn't change that often, you could leave /boot mounted ro except when updating the kernel. In this case, a journal doesn't really help unless you get a crash in the midst of a kernel update. Bottom line for your situation: Use ext3. If you want the ability to change the size of partitions, use LVM. For a laptop, you may want to put everything in encrypted partitions (with a separate /boot). Doug. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
