[Gllug] Reiserfs gotchas?

[Allen Baranov]

Hi,

I have used both Reiser and ext3. I'm not that aware of a speed change. I use 
my PC for browsing, mail and ssh mainly so disk speed is not a major issue. 

I'd recommend you go for ext3 simply because if you have the latest filesystem 
tools all it takes is one command per file system (eg: tune2fs -j /dev/hda1), 
a change in fstab and a remount or reboot. Its very quick and easy and no 
need to do backups. Essentially all ext3 is is ext2 with a journal. In an 
earlier email it mentioned that you'd need to recreate the journal if you run 
ext2. This is not so. Basically if you boot with ext2 and unmout the 
partition cleanly it assumes that everything is fine and there is no need to 
update the journal. If you boot with ext2 and don't unmount cleanly ext3 will 
do an fsck and get you up and running again. Once you have created the 
journal once, you (in theory) never need to create it again. Thats the 
advantage of it - its ext2 exactly as is with a journal added. I never had 
problems with ext3. I actually used to hit reset every once in a while just 
because I could. :)

I use Reiserfs now because it sounds interesting. I like the development that 
is going into it. Basically, ext3's good points are that it is ext2 with a 
journal. Reiserfs's good points are that it is not ext2 with a journal. Its 
more than that. One time I had a major crash on my box and I needed to 
totally rebuild the filesystem metadata. I'm not sure why it crashed so bad 
but it was stressful times. I lost two library files which I then reinstalled 
and all was fine. The recovery tools, even thought they are not developed 
very well did their jobs quite nicely.

I would say the two filesystems are very stable and work very well, reiser is 
bit more advanced but not as stable. I would recommend ext3 if you need to 
upgrade because it is so easy to do and to roll back but either one for a new 
installation. 

The new lilo's do boot linux up off reiserfs partitions but I still run ext2 
on  /boot.

Allen Baranov
Ps. Congrats to all the Gooners.

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