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Lethality
Tux's lil' helper
Joined: 28 Mar 2006
Posts: 118
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 Posted: Sat Dec 09, 2006 10:08 pm Post subject: Boot partition filesystem? |
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Hello,
I am going to do a fresh gentoo install and I wonder what FS is the best for the boot partition.
The manual suggests ext2 for no apparent reason, and I wonder why since both ext3 and ReiserFS is much faster. Perhaps the obvious reason is that it doesn't matter, but still I'd like to know 
Thanks in advance. |
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sonicbhoc
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Joined: 24 Oct 2005
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Location: In front of the computer screen
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| Posted: Sat Dec 09, 2006 10:16 pm Post subject: |
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the boot partition doesn't need journalling. Using ext2 reduces overhead, or at least that's what I remember reading. You're free to use ext3, but I don't know about using reiser with grub. All of my boot partitions have been ext something.
_________________
I'm too lazy to keep this stupid signature up to date, so here's something more interesting:
My friend Hetdegon can draw if you ask me.
Now using PClinuxOS on my laptop and Gentoo on my desktop and new laptop. |
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IQgryn
l33t
Joined: 05 Sep 2005
Posts: 764
Location: WI, USA
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| Posted: Sat Dec 09, 2006 10:39 pm Post subject: |
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| Actually, ext2 is generally faster than reiser, and always faster than ext3. However, it won't matter much during boot, since there's only a few files being read from the boot partition. Pick whatever you like (I use ext3). |
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cyrillic
Watchman
Joined: 19 Feb 2003
Posts: 7313
Location: Groton, Massachusetts USA
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| Posted: Sat Dec 09, 2006 11:39 pm Post subject: |
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| sonicbhoc wrote: | | I don't know about using reiser with grub. |
ReiserFS works fine with GRUB, as long as you use grub-0.90 or newer.
I know this because I normally don't use a separate partition for /boot , I boot directly from my (reiserfs) root partition. |
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richfish
Apprentice
Joined: 03 Mar 2006
Posts: 202
Location: Phoenix, AZ
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| Posted: Sat Dec 09, 2006 11:49 pm Post subject: Re: Boot partition filesystem? |
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| Lethality wrote: | Hello,
I am going to do a fresh gentoo install and I wonder what FS is the best for the boot partition.
The manual suggests ext2 for no apparent reason, and I wonder why since both ext3 and ReiserFS is much faster. Perhaps the obvious reason is that it doesn't matter, but still I'd like to know
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The real answer is: that was the preference of the person who wrote the guide! You are of course free to disagree and try something else.
But for the most part, it doesn't really matter. Because /boot is rarely written to (in fact I mount mine ro), so journalling is not really important. The most common thing that reads from it is the grub boot loader, and it only knows how to read disk blocks through the BIOS, so it is slow as hell anyway! Also grub has to use it's own filesystem drivers, and not the kernel's, so a simple filesystem is better here. This is proven by the historical problems with reading from other filesystems (like having to use the notail option with reiserfs), even if they are mostly resolved now. |
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Jake
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Joined: 31 Jul 2003
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| Posted: Sun Dec 10, 2006 1:33 am Post subject: |
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| IQgryn wrote: | | Actually, ext2 is generally faster than reiser, and always faster than ext3. However, it won't matter much during boot, since there's only a few files being read from the boot partition. Pick whatever you like (I use ext3). |
Intuitively, you'd expect ext2 to always be faster than ext3, but that simply isn't the case. Many workloads benefit from full journaling. See http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-fs8.html#4 (link stolen from codergeek42's Some ext3 Filesystem Tips). Also, ext2 doesn't have the dir_index option. The only guaranteed disadvantage of journaling is space, and ultimately that's why people use ext2 for /boot.
As for why people bother with a little filesystem at the beginning of the disk for /boot, there's the issue of bootloader readability that has already been mentioned, but also historically the BIOS had to be able to address the kernel directly with CHS. Modern versions of GRUB are able to work around these limitations. |
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Lethality
Tux's lil' helper
Joined: 28 Mar 2006
Posts: 118
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| Posted: Sun Dec 10, 2006 2:30 am Post subject: |
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Thanks alot for all the answers  !
I ended up choosing ext2 after all as I understand it has little effect on the boot time anyway. |
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Installing Gentoo
