I have been running OpenSuse for a number of years and periodically I have to re-install due to a corruption of the reiserFS. The repair utility only works sometimes. When it doesn't I have been forced to re-install everything. The last time it got so corrupted that my root partition disappeared and despite the repair system stating the repair was successful, I could not get the system to run. I recently decided to switch to ext3. Has anyone else had that problem with reiser? Is it really reiser or is it something to do with OpenSuse?

I wonder if you may have a problem with your hard drive. Reiser and Ext3 both are better at recovery than other filesystems.

Not Reiser. It's a junk filesystem. Use ext3. Even SUSE turned their back to the Reiserfs some time ago.

You don't have backups ??? ....

It must be really hard to have an obsession

Two months ago and because Reiser has been accused of murdering his wife not because it is a junk filesystem

And admmoon you definetely have a problem with your hard drive if it gets corrupted on and on again

Not at all - with potentially flaky filesystem/hardware I would consider it obligatory.
Depends on how you value your time and your data I guess ...

And to answer the original question, the (original) Reiserfs had serious design flaws as far as I was concerned, so I refused to use it (was rectified later). Still don't use it.
All filesystems have the potential to break - I've lost several ext3, however I continue to prefer it.

Reiserfs works OK, I've been using it since 2000/2001. However, given Mr. Reiser's current predicament, future maintenance may be a problem. Reiserfs still has a few technical problems too (especially with scalability--try mounting a 200G reiserfs filesystem, 20 minutes later...), which are unlikely to ever be fixed, so for a fresh install, you're better off with ext3 (I'll be doing just that with my next install).

Now, how much is such a statement worth? Every now and then you can see some noob telling others: "Wow, I reinstalled Linux, man my computer is fast with Reiser!".
Compared to what?! These are just empty words but they keep the myth alive. The myth Reiser is cool, fast, blah-blah.
Of course, ReiserFS is usable, many people are using it. The question is how many are unhappy with it?
The answer is: In case of power outage the risk of corruption is by far greatest with ReiserFS. ReiserFS is the only Linux filesystem that significantly suffers from fragmentation.
As I said it's usable, indeed. But why use it if there are better filesystems?
It was cool when it came out, I used it too. It was the only journaling FS back then. But these times are long gone, other filesystems have developed rapidly. Compared to EXT3, JFS and XFS Reiser is nothing but a junk filesystem today - regardless whether the author is convicted or not.

Just as of curiousity... what is your statement worth? I'm not trying to be harsh here..

Perhaps we could all benefit from some research results on the subject of whether or not it is a "junk filesystem" rather then just statements with no facts to back them up.

Eitherway.. if you have a drive that has gotten corrupt multiple times I would absolutely replace the hardware.


<EDIT>

I searched around to see if I could find any experimentation..

I for one use EXT3 these days, but I did use to use ReiserFS when it was the default for some distributions in the past.

So far I have found a lot of posts that link to the same "performance test" below...

http://navindra.blogspot.com/2004/10...e-failure.html

And here is another benchmark of some file systems...

http://www.linuxinsight.com/first_be...le_system.html

http://linuxgazette.net/122/piszcz.html

There was another one with similar results from Debian developers, can't find it right now. Please note, these tests are made with freshly created filesystems, the performance of ReiserFS deteriorates over time due to the fragmentation. navindra's blog seems outdated. So much about "oh man, my box is fast with Reiser now!"
Regarding failures. There is a number of threads on Gentoo forums, they all end with same suggestion - steer clear from Reiser. About high probability of ReiserFS corruption ... I do not think any statistics are available on this matter. You've got me here. This is just opinion of some folks, me included, based on experience. We think EXT3 is the most reliable FS when used with systems without UPS.

EXT3 tips

Thanks for all the replies. I guess I should have mentioned that I have replaced the hard drive. The one I am using is about 6 months old and is a Maxtor 300GB. I have had 3 reiser corruptions in the past 6 months, though. Before that (a Western Digital 200GB hard drive) I had 8 or 9 corruptions. Like I said, most of the time the repair tool from the DVD did the trick, but sometimes not. I should also mention that I have had the same problem on my work computer as well, though not as frequently, and I have had to re-install only once on it.

I do have backups of my data on external hard drives, so I never really lost anything important, but it is still really annoying having to rebuild a system.

I have switched to ext3 and I think I will stay there for a while and see what happens.

Thanks for your replies.

Its interesting how things seem to differ between individuals. I mostly use reiserfs and have never had a single incident of data corruption even after a powercut or unclean shutdown. The only time I use ext3 is on Fedora Core and related distros because selinux does not seem to play nicely with reiserfs (I guess due to the ACL issue).

I wish I'd have done that. Now I could switch to EXT3 and say: "oh man, runs my box fast with EXT3 now!"

It's worth about 2c.

A while ago, my system crashed (can't remember why, probably overheating) during a kernel compile. After that whenever I attempted to access the kernel tree, the box would reboot immediately, no panics, nothing, but the big R. The rest of the fs was OK, just that tree. A 'reiserfsck --rebuild-tree --fix-fixable' fixed it, but still, it's concerning that fs corruption could screw the entire system like that. Has that ever happened with ext3? I had little experience with ext3 at that time. But that's the only problem I've ever had with reiser in 6/7 years. As I said, though, I'm migrating over to ext3 and xfs.

OTOH, I know people using reiserfs who still haven't grasped the concept of shutting down the system, they just flip off the switch (I've given up trying to explain it to them). The've been using Linux for over a year, no corruptions or problems, even with that daily abuse. So I'd hardly call it "junk", even if it has been surpassed now.