What filesystem for a notebook?

askwar · Posted: Mon Aug 08, 2005 9:32 pm Post subject: What filesystem for a notebook?

Hello!

What filesystem(s) do you recommend for use on a notebook? I'm looking for a FS that's fairly stable even if all of a sudden the power goes away (battery empty) and one, that also doesn't (overly) unneccesarily spin up the hard drive.

I don't think that I'll use Reiser4, as it's lacking an online fs resizer. At least making the fs bigger should be doable while the FS is mounted.

Thanks,
Alexander

codergeek42

Djento · n00b Joined: 03 May 2005 Posts: 66 Location: Bruxelles

I'm using ReiserFS now, i was disappointed about Reiser4, fragmentate really quick and other problem (but no data loss).
About ReiserFS speed and Ext3, i don't know, but it's okay for me.

In fact, i always used ReiserFS as FS(Desktop and laptop) and never had problem although i had a lot of sudden shutdown (bad voltage here).

Moreover, 30min ago i just took off the powersupply cable from my laptop (without battery installed) and obviously it shutdown suddently, i rebooted, no problem

(it's the second time in the same week, DAmN)

if i can give you an advice.... make also one partition just for "portage" directory (big fragmentation) and use LVM2 for structuring your HDD.

my table looks like that on my notebook:

/dev/hda1 /boot reiserfs (32mo, in fact reiserfs is an idiot choice for so small partition, but i prefer to activate only one FS in kernel)
/dev/hda2 none swap (768mo)
/dev/hda3 Physical volume for LVM (the rest of my space disk) ~59GO (Physical volume= Primary partition)
/dev/lvm/root / reiserfs
/dev/lvm/var /var reiserfs (Var contains: /var/tmp/portage, /var/tmp/.port) 3go but i could extend later and easily
/dev/lvm/home /home reiserfs
/dev/lvm/stuff /mnt/stuff reiserfs (big part)

if you want help to get LVM, contact me

cheers

ruben · Guru Joined: 04 Jul 2003 Posts: 462

I use ext3 (in full journalling mode) on my laptop (and be sure to optimize it as mentioned in the post that Codergeek refers to), in combination with laptop-mode. (i don't think that ext3 has an online FS resizer though, but is that really that important?) This can really reduce the amount of disk accesses (on the other hand, the more you reduce the amount of disk accesses by increasing the commit interval, the more "risk" you have that you lose changes to files). I'm not too worried about a "sudden" empty battery though, and you can also configure laptop-mode to automatically switch the commit interval back to normal (5 seconds), when the battery is almost empty. Basically, laptop mode tries to avoid disk access by delaying disk writes as much as possible, and when disk access is needed because of a read, then it also flushes all dirty buffers. But as long as the commit interval of a journalling filesystem is small, your hard disk will probably never spin down.

I also found Debian testing better for use on my laptop, instead of Gentoo; with every little upgrade or sync, there's a whole lot of disk accesses on Gentoo.

Phlogiston · Posted: Tue Oct 25, 2005 6:52 pm Post subject:

hey can I use this laptop-mode tools with every filesystem? That doesn't matter I think, am I right?
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ruben · Guru Joined: 04 Jul 2003 Posts: 462

Yup, it works with every file system. The basic functionality is something which is built into the kernel. This is the part that delays writes as long as possible (till the disk needs to spin up for a read or after a certain amount of time). In addition to that, the script also tries to remount (if configured that way) partitions with journalling file systems to change the commit interval, because a higher commit interval will results in less disk activity. This commit-interval is filesystem specific, but the script takes that into account (it looks at /etc/fstab).
(the software is in portage as laptop-mode-tools)

Phlogiston · Posted: Wed Oct 26, 2005 4:33 am Post subject:

ok thanks, sounds good. I'll try this!
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Workstation: 5.1 SurroundSound, LIRC remote control; Laptop [IBM-T43]: patched sources, s2disk/ram, fingerprint sensor

Dikkiedik · Guru Joined: 04 Oct 2004 Posts: 406 Location: Netherlands

ReiserFS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

PaulBredbury · Watchman Joined: 14 Jul 2005 Posts: 7310

Kurt Steiner · Posted: Thu Oct 27, 2005 2:27 pm Post subject:

I have a laptop too and I use ReiserFS. It's very good.

Dr.Dran · Posted: Fri Dec 30, 2005 10:29 am Post subject:

Excuse me, i heard the xfs in conjunction with the laptop-mode-tools increase the battery life... does anyone have experience with that configuration?

Thanx

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