Hi Jim Mostek,
Thanx a lot for your reaction!
> I haven't played with ReiserFS but from what I've read/heard, my guess
> is that it will do small files really well. XFS' directories can
> also handle many entries, but ReiserFS with its packing and data in the
> inode can handle small files better. But, I don't know how ReiserFS will
> do when many processes are hitting the same directory on a multi-CPU
> system. XFS has had lots of work done in this area since we have many
> customer running old sendmail which does all its file work in the same
> directory.
>
> For information on XFS, see http://oss.sgi.com/projects/xfs.
> The main design goals of XFS are very large storage, scalability,
Like with the LVM and MD stuff? I believe these thing are integrated
into XFS, right? But with Linux and ReiserFS you can also use LVM and
MD (does ReiserFS work with Linux sw raid now?)?
> and journaling.
I believe (again :-) that ext3 journals everything, while ReiserFS
journals meta-data. Is this true? And what kind of journaling does XFS
do? What is the (dis)advantage of the different types of journaling?
And why is there a difference? Do you use ext3 for /usr, ReiserFS for
/var and XFS for /home, for example? (do they have a certain target for
which they aim?). And why don't you mention ext3 at all? Are ReiserFS
or XFS a better choice?
> XFS is much more than just a file system with journaling.
> If you are running with several processors and/or pushing lots of large
> files/data around, I suspect that XFS will be the best.
>
> In the short term, XFS is still in pre-beta form and beta won't be for a
> couple of months, yet. The current schedule has a production quality version
> of
> XFS available later this summer (northern hemisphere).
What is northern hemisphere? I've seen it before on the list..
And what does pre-beta mean? For example, a pre-beta Linux kernel
doesn't scare me. The same for unstable Debian. Does pre-beta mean that
it eats my files? That is it hard to install? That there are no
userspace tools? (I believe you have to patch the existing tools?).
That it changes a lot, and thing will break in the near future? I
really would like to play with a jfs, but think I need to concentrate
on one jfs only, because of time..
> XFS will have additional capabilities that the other file system you
> mentioned don't have such as Direct I/O and extended attributes. At least
> I haven't heard that others are adding these.
>
> Longer term, it appears that the Linux community will have a rich set
> of file systems available. These can be downloaded and analyzed.
> I suspect that there will be some matrix mapping applications/environments
> to file systems to show which file system(s) to use for each.
Yes, that's why I ask. :-) Is it a problem if you have both ReiserFS
and XFS in the kernel? For example, al the www stuff (with the small
files) on ReiserFS, and the streaming video stuff on XFS?
Btw, ReiserFS can put small (pieces of) files together in one block,
right? Does that mean that you can have block sizes (frag size) of 8k
without the loss of space, but with the read/write speedup for larger
files? (I'm aware that that feature also causes a performance penalty)
And while I'm asking: how well do ReiserFS and XFS fit into the current
2.3.99 kernel, and thus in 2.4? I believe ext3 aims at 2.2 for the
moment?
I hope my questions and the answers are what others also want to know..
Ookhoi (who likes the current fs development a lot!)
> >We now have several journaling file systems, like XFS, ReiserFS and
> >ext3 (and more I believe, but I would like to concentrate on these
> >three).
> >I have played with ext3 a few weeks ago, which was oke (easy to install
> >and if I unplugged the machine, it was up and running (fine) in no time
> >just the way sysadmins like it. :-)
> >
> >Now it seemes to me that ReiserFS has a larger developer base and aims
> >a bit higher than ext3. Is that true? If not, what is the difference
> >between ext3 and ReiserFS?
> >ReiserFS seemes to be a good choice for spool directories because it
> >can handle a _huge_ amount of files (and dirs) in a dir efficiently.
> >
> >And there is XFS. What is the advantage or disadvantage of XFS compared
> >to ext3 and/or ReiserFS? It seemes to me that XFS is a bit less stable
> >than the others at this moment. Is that true? XFS exists for some time
> >now. Is that an advantage above ReiserFS because it had more time to
> >develop itself to what is is now, or is ReiserFS 'better' because it
> >doesn't have to carry its history and doesn't have to be backwards
> >compatible?
> >
> >Please enlighten me. :-)
> >
> > Ookhoi
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