how stable is reiser4?

WladyX · Guru Joined: 25 Nov 2004 Posts: 503 Location: Romania

Hey i use r4 for a few months on my / (which includes /home), so far no big problems. I'm very happy with it.
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rush_ad · Posted: Fri Mar 04, 2005 5:01 pm Post subject:

thanks, i will give it a try.

0n0w1c · Apprentice Joined: 02 Mar 2004 Posts: 273

I have had little long term luck with R4. While I can successfully install it, I lose the fs eventually... as in lose it all. I get i/o errors when attempting to write and when I do a ls on thr fs, I see nothing on the partition even though a chkfs says the fs is okay. I suspect it has something to do with my mirrored scsi drives (software mirroring) and SMP.

I have recently upgraded to a hardware raid controller using 1+0 and I might try it again. I will pass along any info of my experiences.

jannis · Posted: Fri Mar 04, 2005 10:41 pm Post subject:

WladyX · Guru Joined: 25 Nov 2004 Posts: 503 Location: Romania

rush_ad · Posted: Sat Mar 05, 2005 4:24 am Post subject:

i'd like to try out reiser4 but only problem is that no other distro will be able to read reiser4. such as suse, it will need the reiser4 support. so i am still debating

codergeek42 · Posted: Sat Mar 05, 2005 4:32 am Post subject:

WladyX · Guru Joined: 25 Nov 2004 Posts: 503 Location: Romania

MasterX · Veteran Joined: 26 Jun 2003 Posts: 1165

So, reiser4 is not supported? You have to patch the kernel? Is there a patch for the vanilla version of the kernel?

WladyX · Guru Joined: 25 Nov 2004 Posts: 503 Location: Romania

Morbo · n00b Joined: 08 Jan 2005 Posts: 19

I've had pretty bad luck with ReiserFS file systems but, to its credit, I've always been able to recover through the reiserfs tools. It's also hard to tell exactly what to blame, flakey IDE controllers, power failures, lockups, etc are more to blame than Reiser in most cases I suspect. I think all the modern file systems are pretty good as long as you have a stable system and a UPS.

Deranger · Veteran Joined: 26 Aug 2004 Posts: 1215

I used it 3 months, but then I returned to ext3. I can only see difference between ext3 and Reiser4 when syncing Portage tree or diffing kernel trees. Maybe I'll switch back someday...

Reiser4 is pretty stable on x86.

codergeek42 · Posted: Sun Mar 06, 2005 12:26 am Post subject:

drakos7 · Posted: Sun Mar 06, 2005 2:27 am Post subject:

Been running reiser4 here on my laptop for 4+ months without a single hiccup. I am one of the daring ones who put it on / (with ext2 on /boot)
Works great. Yes, ~x86 install.

YMMV (your milage may vary)
BNI (batteries not included)

Deranger · Veteran Joined: 26 Aug 2004 Posts: 1215

Jake · Veteran Joined: 31 Jul 2003 Posts: 1132

holst · n00b Joined: 07 May 2003 Posts: 12

lol. I was reading this thread and just stumble over a funny quote

Sparohok · n00b Joined: 29 Aug 2004 Posts: 13

Speaking of funny quotes:

Pink · Veteran Joined: 24 Jul 2003 Posts: 1062

rjreb · n00b Joined: 19 Aug 2003 Posts: 40

Just my own experience... I took a chance and put reiserfs4 on a production qmail server on the /var/vpopmail/domains and /var/spool/qmailscan directories over a year ago. Not one single problem.

Phlogiston · Posted: Thu Sep 22, 2005 12:18 pm Post subject:

I know that this thread is old, but has there changed a lot during this time about reiser4 stableness? I consider using it on my new amd64 notebook? What do you think?
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vipernicus · Posted: Thu Sep 22, 2005 1:36 pm Post subject:

crazycat · Posted: Sun Sep 25, 2005 2:44 pm Post subject:

Well i used reiser4 for a while now and i kind of reverted to reiser3 for root filesystem cause its a pain in the ass to patch each time u upgrade a kernel and grub doesn't support it (i dont use boot partition , only backup kernels on different filesystems and a backup cd). I also didn't like the heavy cpu usage while copyng large files but for example ut2k4 loading times were shorter with reiser4, but it kind of degrades responsitiveness while using so much cpu. I now use reiser3 for root cause of great performance with lots of small files and sane cpu usage and ext3 for ~200gb /home mainly because i can mount it in windows on demand if i need some space. I also found a pair of interesting links about this:
http://www.willsmith.org/opensource/reiser4/fragperf/
and
http://navindra.blogspot.com/2004/10/kde-dot-news-ext3s-miserable-failure.html

I dont really know what to think about this all filesystem mess , i think ext3 is more of a hack build on top of top of ext2 with other hacks added later like dir_index , which grows big and slow and inefficent, like windows (you know the story , lots of layers == lots of speed issues ) where reiser was more some new experiment, whether it succeded or not is another question.