ReiserFS vs. ext2/ext3
 

is there a significant difference in overall system performance for doing things like compiling java/c++ and the like if i were to use IBM ReiserFS partitions instead of ext3 or ext2 (or even native) ?

and if so, just how much trouble is it to convert from one format to another or is that out of the question as i have a mandrake 9.1 spread over several ext3/ext2 partitions on 3 gig on a dell laptop (inspiron 7500). i do have another 8 gig in use by windoze and i could do some space slashing there if i really really had to setup another partition to migrate the 9.1 install that i just did over the weekend.

question is, is the IBM ReiserFS partition format significantly better in overall performance to warrent stripping everything down and doing it again ?

thanks

- perry

reiser and ext3 are essentially the same, if you are developing C. they are both journalling systems. personally I use ext3 because it seems very robust for powerouts but reiser should be just as good, if not better.
if you want to change filesystems that already work you are a nutter, but in short start from a rescue system, mount all the partitions in turn and make tarballs of each (tar is badly documented but its something like 'tar zcf mnt/* > usr.tar.gz' experiment with tar before hand) then put the tarballs on the free (windows) partition, or even better some CDs. then use mkfs to reformat the partitions to reiser or whatever. put the tarballs back, change fstab to reflect the new filesytems and reboot normally.

It goes without saying you can cabbage everything with a simple typo somewhwere along the line so be carefull out there, or at least practice on that old 486 sitting in the attic.

changing from ext2 to ext3 is simple however, something along the lines of 'tune2fs -j /dev/hd??' then changing the /dev/h?? entry in fstab from ext2 to ext3 - a warmly reccomended step

this i do have to say...
 

it took the whole weekend to put mandrake 9.1 on there however it essentially went on without a hitch. and this morning i'm marvelling at how smooth everything seems to be. principly two things stand out most, the wonderful fonts now being displayed on the browsers (9.0 seemed to have trouble giving me clear renedering in the browsers) and the processor is soooo quiet. i'm looking at my gkrellm and it shows minimal activity compared to what i was seeing with my 9.0.

however, i'm really wondering if setting up my /tmp and /var/www as partitions of type 'native' and the rest as /ext3 had anything to do with it. seems perfectly logical to me to have the /tmp and /var/www as non-journalized. and i'm noticing that there is no longer these strange vertical lines on the cpu monitor that would appear at 5 second intervals under 9.0 (and the setup that i had then).

seems to me that that was the journalized partitions causing that and now that i have logically deducted that this is simply not required, even a hinderence to /tmp and /var/www could this be why my system is soooo nice to me this morning.

just curious

boy is linux every addicting....

- perry

thats the two things i needed to hear this morning. also, thanks very much for describing how to do it by hand should i find myself in a position where i might have to do that in the future.

isn't Linux great!!!!

Linux is the way, after all, what other operating system do we know of that comes with the source code. i think linux is what us object-oriented purests have been bitching at windoze for way to long. like a crowd of pathalogical cleptomaniacs they'll (m$) never be interested in giving us what we really want.

linux is the doom of m$, all they have now are the minions that simply don't or do not want to know the difference

cheers

- perry

From what I understand, reiser FS is much better then ext3 for handling either very large files, or a lot of small ones.

every day is a great day with linux
it took me long a'noth to get here
there ain't no going back thats for sure :-)

i'm not religious anymore but amen to that brother

linux is the way

- perry

Please excuse the late posting; I tripped across this thread while searching for ext3 vs reiserfs threads.

Nothing important, but I also had (to quote perry ) "...these strange vertical lines on the cpu monitor that would appear at 5 second intervals under 9.0 (and the setup that i had then)..." .

I was dual booting RH8 and RH9. gkrellm on RH9 had those 5-second spike lines, RH8 did not. My filesystems were ext3. I couldn't figure out why it was happening.

One day I ran up2date on RH9. After that the lines were gone. Why? I don't know. Maybe something got patched. Or possibly, whatever was causing the flashing red circle with the exclamation point (telling me to run up2date) was causing it.

This is a non-issue for me now. I reformatted and loaded Slack 9.1. Woohoo...

LOL - actually, i believe the "lines" were journalizing activity on my drives and therefore related to ext3. i since imposed a policy where /tmp and /var/www and others get ext2 and not ext3.

however, it may be because of installing the latest patches that has reduced and/or eliminated this effect

i was a little concerned at the time as i was wondering if i was being "watched", the bad experience i had with Windoze & spyware and all.

incidentally, i've got both mandrake and slackware installed now, real cool.....!

too bad i can't get at the Java Desktop for free...
(however i think we are actually ahead of the game with Linux + Gnome)

cheers

- perry