Hi,

According to to documentation, when a linux computer shuts down suddenly wihout going through the shutdown process, it may cause your filesystem to corrupt and lose all your data. But in windows it's not like that? Only a scandisk is run after rebooting? Whys that?

thnx

Not exactly true, windows runs scandisk to fix the problems that are created by improper shutdown.


fsck does basically the same thing in Linux.
Linux can be much better if you upgrade to ext3 file system

ext3 keeps a journal file that has disk change info, so when an improper shutdown leaves a file open it can fix the file and recover the system in five seconds or less.

But then i have to format my partition, losing everything, dun hav time to do that rightnow.

But in some internet sites it suggests that you can lose everything just by an improper hutdown?

I won't say it's impossible, but I have never encoutered something like this (and I have many Linux machines and they sometimes lose power).

I won't say it's impossible, but I have never encoutered something like this (and I have many Linux machines and they sometimes lose power).

Here's is what you do to convert to ext3

edit /etc/fstab

change ext2 to ext3 and note the /dev/name for the partitions you change

then run this command for each partition you changed in fstab(substitute the proper /dev/name for hdxx)

tune2fs -j /dev/hdxx


then use this command to check it after reboot or remount to make sure it's ext3


cat /proc/mounts

they should say ext3

that's why you should do it, although loosing everything is a little bit exagerated. You may damage a file or two though

it's really unlikely that you'd lose anything during a bad shutdown, unless you're doing some seriously hard-drive intensive stuff. i've had more abnormal shutdowns than i can shake a small carrot at, and i've never lost a file... just had to wait through fsck's...

linux itself isn't vunerable to bad shutdowns anymore than any other o/s - it's just that the most common file system under linux, ext2, is. the flip side of that is that ext2 is MUCH faster than any other filesystem. mainly tho, linux doesn't crash much. power-outtages will be your greatest foe here.

The worst thing I had happen was having to manually run fsck and a badly damaged file got moved to lost&found so I had to restore the file. Luckily it was not a critical file

That's when I decided to go with ext3

IMHO Reiserfs is better and faster than ext2 when it comes to smaller filesizes like in home PC

give reiserfs a try.

i really don't know that much about reiser - i've read some rave reviews about it tho. i was just remembering a benchmarking between ext2 and some other fs's like fat32, NTFS, ect. ext2 left them so far in the dust it wasn't even funny.

ext3 is much easier to switch to from ext2 than reiser is tho... (i think )... if you have an easy way to do it, i'd really like to try it out.

I personally use ReiserFS on my system, and love it. Have not had a bad message from the file system yet.

I can tell you also that I have also played with ext3, XFS, and there is another journalling one, but ReiserFS seems to be faster.

And to protect against power outages, may I suggest you buy a UPS? You dont need an expensive, fancy one. I have one that will last for 10 minutes, and it was only $50.

Also if you setup your system to power off when the ups battery goes low you will not have to worry.

Installing Reiserfs on partions like /home /mp3 etc....
is quite easy.
The 2.4 series has builtin support for reiserfs.

1.Compile the Kernel (latest if you have one). Don't especially use earlier ones like 2.4.2 .There r known issues
2.Enable Reiserfs in the filesystems menu.
3.Proceed as usual.
4.Backup the partition which you want to convert.
5.Convert using reiserfsprogs

plz visit www.namesys.com for more info.

What I've been unable to do is to convert the root partition to reiserfs :-(

shadowhacker have you tried this?

are you using an initrd on your / for booting

umm..
initrd
what's that?

can u elaborate please?