ext4 or reiser4?

kEiNsTeiN · Guru Joined: 29 Apr 2005 Posts: 361 Location: Germany

Hi!
I'm suing xfs right now, but need to increase my partition size to extend at the beginning of the partition, therefore, I aparently cannot use xfs_growfs.
So I will have to reformat anyway, and was wondering which one was besser: ext4 or reiser4?

I'm also wondering if this source is reliable: http://linuxhelp.150m.com/resources/fs-benchmarks.htm, because he states:

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Mon Apr 30, 2007 2:51 pm Post subject:

kEiNsTeiN,

They are both incomplete and experimentail. Only choose either if you maintain full current backups and don't mind using them
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i92guboj · Posted: Mon Apr 30, 2007 3:03 pm Post subject: Re: ext4 or reiser4?

kEiNsTeiN · Guru Joined: 29 Apr 2005 Posts: 361 Location: Germany

this is not about philosophy, or "dont use reiser4, its code isn't pretty!", I just want to know about the PERFORMANCE of those filesystems. I keep full backups, no biggy if they randomly explode.....

i92guboj · Posted: Mon Apr 30, 2007 3:46 pm Post subject:

Well, if you don't mind screwing things out then go along and use whatever you preffer.

Reiser4 is supossedly in the lines of performance, while ext4 is an improved ext3, with many additions, amongst them, support for bigger filesystems. That should not be a concern for you unless you need anything above 8-16 terabytes.

There's enough around both of them in the net. Just google a bit.

Genone · Posted: Mon Apr 30, 2007 4:00 pm Post subject: Re: ext4 or reiser4?

vipernicus · Posted: Mon Apr 30, 2007 6:50 pm Post subject: Re: ext4 or reiser4?

kEiNsTeiN · Guru Joined: 29 Apr 2005 Posts: 361 Location: Germany

okay, since vipernicus is really into ext4, and I like his patchset, I'll just assume he's right and give it a try.

vipernicus, what mkfs flags, and what mount flags do you use? recomendations? how-tos

? (yes, one asking for howtos should not be using experimental kernel patchsets, yet alone an experimental root filesystem)
otherwise I would simply use the mount-options "extents,data=writeback", and the documentation at http://www.bullopensource.org/ext4/files/ext4.txt
but if you have any other tunings, please tell me which

thanks!

btw: awesome patchset!

shaumux · Posted: Mon Apr 30, 2007 8:54 pm Post subject:

Now I am confused the official reiserfs site says that reiser4 has been released
So is it released or is it still experimntal?

vipernicus · Posted: Mon Apr 30, 2007 9:24 pm Post subject:

kEiNsTeiN · Guru Joined: 29 Apr 2005 Posts: 361 Location: Germany

about e2fsprogs: I have -1.39-r2 (the one in portage).
when I diff -r1.ebuild and -r2.ebuild, the latter one does NOT have the ext4 patches included...
the changelog also states that the support has been dropped, even though +files/e2fsprogs-1.39-ext4-prototypes.patch has been added.

I'm confused.
Can I grab your overlay via layman or just with svn?

kernelOfTruth · Posted: Mon Apr 30, 2007 10:40 pm Post subject:

ah, come on, ext4 is far from completion, and as kernel develops on lkml.org state it currently more resembles ext3 than ext4 :wink:

if you really need performance I'd go for a 2.6.20 viper-based kernel with 2.6.20-viper4 reiser4 patch, then you're getting somewhere

2.6.21 for the moment seems to screw reiser4 /root partitions, non-root reiser4 partitions seem to work fine, currently using 4 of them & no corruptions so far with 2.6.21 kernels

=> I never had corruptions with reiser-based partitions, whereas with ext3 + co. I already had several data loss (& friends of mine as well)

some data:

ext4dev is not bad, but it uses much more space & is loud like ext3; its performance is comparable to reiserfs++ == little to no slower than reiser4 (just got accustomed to the silent operations of reiser4 :lol:

)

reiser4 is the most space-efficient file-system I know of, its pros are: silent (not so loud hdd-operations & though more hdd-friendly), uses pretty little space (even less with cryptcompress), most performant with copy & delete as well, very data safe (atomic operations, if some problems / corruptions with reiser4-driver occurs no data loss)

if ext4 & reiser4 are no option reiserfs & jfs are more sane options ... xfs in my opinion is a hdd-killer :lol:

just as vipernicus / previous posters wrote: try it out for yourself, but I'll say you'll love reiser4 (provided it works with the kernel you choose :roll:

)

just my 2ct :wink:

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vipernicus · Posted: Mon Apr 30, 2007 10:42 pm Post subject:

kernelOfTruth · Posted: Mon Apr 30, 2007 10:43 pm Post subject:

kEiNsTeiN · Guru Joined: 29 Apr 2005 Posts: 361 Location: Germany

my reasons for choosing ext4 over reiser4 would be, that reiser4 appears to have ugly code, and therefore is disliked by kernel developers, ergo not really future-compatible. ext4 on the other hand is more actively developed, and will in the end be bettter than reiser4, AND in the mainstream-kernel. So why not use it now, accept the little speed disadvantage over reiser4 (or not, according to vipernicus), and screw murder-reiser4 (this was a joke, do not burn me).
Another reason would be my bad experience with reiser4. Lost all my data a year ago.

what about the e2fsprogs now?

vipernicus · Posted: Mon Apr 30, 2007 11:04 pm Post subject:

Naib · Posted: Mon Apr 30, 2007 11:17 pm Post subject:

I prefer data integrity over file system performance myself so I ain't changing from Ext3 for quite some time
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codergeek42 · Posted: Tue May 01, 2007 12:54 am Post subject:

kEiNsTeiN · Guru Joined: 29 Apr 2005 Posts: 361 Location: Germany

using ext4 now. hm. not much of a difference

yet. But hey, now I can say that I'm using ext4

got a few problems inititially with non-working init, I guess it was because of missing /dev. used makedev, now everything seems to work just fine. should have closed amarok before backing up...

pigeon768 · l33t Joined: 02 Jan 2006 Posts: 683

vipernicus · Posted: Wed May 02, 2007 2:13 pm Post subject:

i92guboj · Posted: Wed May 02, 2007 2:29 pm Post subject:

shaumux · Posted: Wed May 02, 2007 2:48 pm Post subject:

Actually i didn't mean why isn't it included in the kernel but the simple question that is it still experimental or released or is it released and experimental?
though can can you please give me some link that i can know for what reasons its not in the kernel

i92guboj · Posted: Wed May 02, 2007 3:02 pm Post subject:

shaumux · Posted: Wed May 02, 2007 3:32 pm Post subject:

Thank you
The last post was exactly what i was looking for
So to sum it up its the uncertainty of reiserfs's future which is influencing the problem.
f the there weren't an uncertain future the chances that the other reasons could have been fixed but that thats also uncertain now.
Am i correct?

Also is the jfs in the kernel jfs or jfs2
I read that jfs2 is a 64 bit filesystem while my system is 32 biy and hence the confusion and reading from the above post i think its reliable.
I may be wrong though, I am no expert.
But how about its performance?
I don't know if i am right or wrong but reiserfs is supposed to be be very space efficient and fast
Can i get the same performance from jfs?