What is ReiserFS? How is it differnet from Ext3?

shassouneh · 06-04-2002, 04:13 AM

Dear ALl,
I have just installed SuSE 7.3, and by default it formatted the linux partitions as ReiserFS. What exactly Is ReiserFS? What advantages/disadvantages does it have over say Ext2 or Ext3?
Just curious.

Thanx for taking the time, effort, and patience to read through and/or reply to this

IceNineJon · 06-04-2002, 04:24 AM

From what little knowledge I have about it, reiserfs was created to increase speed and efficiency for large files (kind of like how NTFS is optimized for larger files than FAT(32) is). All three are journaling file systems. Can't tell you much else about it...I'm using ext2

MartBrooks · 06-04-2002, 04:52 AM

Both reiser and ext3 are indeed journalling file systems.

Reiser also has some other features which can make the storage of files more efficient by allowing the "tails" of multiple files to be stored on the same inode.

I personally use ext3 as I've had some fairly major problems with reiser in the past.

Regards

llama_meme · 06-04-2002, 05:01 AM

I heard that ReiserFS was optimised for handling small files (although I believe it handles large files as fast as ext2/3). The idea being that databases can be stored as many small files instead of one large one or something...

Alex

shassouneh · 06-04-2002, 12:23 PM

hmmm, interesting. Thanx for the added knowledge. I learn something new every day. If any of you jhappen to stumble on a link of some kind that fully explains Journaling file systems and/or ReiserFS please feel free to share with all of us.

Thanx for all the replies. They are indeed much appreciated

Mara · 06-04-2002, 12:36 PM

I'm using Reiser. From my point of view, it's slower than ext2, but not much,really. In my case, ~5%. Since I instlled it, no problems with wrong shutdowns etc.

shassouneh · 06-04-2002, 12:49 PM

Yes I have noticed that I barely (if ever) have to run fsck or have to wait while SuSE runs fsck at boot time due to Ext3 not shutting down properly. On the other hand, I think ReiserFS is slightly faster than Ext3 (dunno about Ext2).
I need to learn more about this ReiserFS business, LOL

shassouneh · 06-04-2002, 12:49 PM

Sorry guys, I clicked on "reply" by mistake and i thought I was in another topic. Sorry again

DavidPhillips · 06-04-2002, 01:49 PM

I tested it a while back and on a slow computer it was slower than ext3 and I did not see much difference on ext2 vs ext3. However this may change on a fast computer. I just decided to stick with ext3.

shassouneh · 06-04-2002, 02:48 PM

I C. I'm not running a fast compuet. Just a P3 500 for now since my other machines died on me

Stephanie_new · 06-04-2002, 03:54 PM

From my understanding, ext3 is basically the same as ext2, but with journalling capabilites. This would seem to be the case for me as BeOS, which can read ext2 partitions, has no problem with ext 3 reading either.

ReiserFS is a different file system altogether. It is a project that is taking advantage of new developments in computing technology, instead of building on top of existing technology.

shassouneh · 06-04-2002, 04:25 PM

Cool. Thanx for the info Stephanie. Does anyone know where I can obtain specific information about the advantages/disadvantages of ReiserFS?

shassouneh · 06-04-2002, 04:31 PM

Doing A simple search on Google, I found a page and I thought I'd share it with you guys

ReiserFS project

Apparently ReiserFS has one advantage (according to this site) over Ext2 or Ext3, that is you are not required to run fsck all the time. Also, according to this site, it saves up to 6% of disk space. Who knows whether or not this information is true, but this ReiserFS thing seems to have lots of potential

MartBrooks · 06-04-2002, 04:38 PM

Errm, that's 50% incorrect. Using ext3 will somwehat negate the need for a full fsck in the event of an unclean mount.

Resiser /does/ save diskspace due to clustered file tails as I mentioned earlier.

What that page fails to mention, and I still believe to be a problem, is that if, for example, you stick 1.8 million 4-30k jpegs on a reiser partition, you shoukd make sure you have a really really good backup as resier will turn it into data puree.

Regards

shassouneh · 06-04-2002, 05:03 PM

What do you mean by "data puree"? This is troublesome and I'd like to know about it