File system that works best for both Linux and BSD
 

Hi, i'm planning a dual-boot installaion of a Linux distribution and FreeBSD.

I would make separate partitions (on a separate hard drive) just for storing data and sharing it between the two...so what would be the best file system for doing that ? Ext2, ext3, fat32 ... ?

I think my best bet would be to go for ext2 but i'm not so sure about that, so i'm asking you about your opinions.

i've never seen the bsd file system as an option in any linux install that i have performed. when installing freebsd however you can choose the ext2 file system. make of this what you will, i dont know the compatibility of the 2 this is just an obserbation

It may be better to hold off a little, until FreeBSD 7.0. It is planned to introduce full rw support for ext3 and xfs. Maybe writing to ext3 is already supported in 6.2 but it certainly wasn't yet in 6.0 and xfs is almost entirely missing. Fat would be an option but then fat comes with its known limitations (you can't set permissions and it defragments rather too easily). Ext2 should work but will make booting slower because it requires regular fscks due to the absence of a journal.

I am currently using DesktopBSD (which is actually FreeBSD 6.2 with a graphical installer) and i am able to read-write to my ext3 partition.

But i was wondering if there were some better alternatives, and now i see there aren't. Thanks!

Ext3 is a good filesystem anyway.