I was just wondering what the main reasons would be for using different filesystems (pro's and cons) for Linux partitions, mainly security implications, but if there are other reasons I would like to try and find out as much as I can about it....
I've set up my system using swap for my swap partition, ReiserFS for my root partition and Ext2 for all the rest, but I did this for no other reason than the fact that this is what was used in a screenshot in the SuSE 8.0 manual for my system....
So, what would be the pro's and cons of using Ext3 instead of Ext2 or any other of the available filesystems, JFS, ReiserFS or XFS. I know about the obvious problems with using say NFS but I don't know anything about any of the others....

Thanks...........John....

Ext3/ReiserFS are used, because they're better when there's a problem (no power etc). Ext2/Ext3 should be used when you want to share the partition with another distro/system that does not have ReiserFS support. Ext3 is compatibile with Ext2, so you can mount ext3 partiton as ext2.

If you have a stand-alone machine, you can use every filesystem. The choice is more important when you want to share the partitions.

I am using a standalone machine, with two hard drives, I have a few different distro's installed but they're all assigned there own partitions. I don't need to share them at the moment, but I'm just waiting to get another monitor and then the second drive will be going into my other computer, so if I need to change filesystems in the future, is it possible to do so without having to reinstall Linux. Can I just format an Ext2 partition to something else on its own, without affecting the other partitions...

Thanks.......John...

The conversion is easiest with Ext2 <-> Ext3. If a partition isn't shared you can change the filesystem without affecting other ones. I guess Ext3 is the best choice for you.

EXT3, Reiser, IBM's JFS and possibly some others are all Journaling filesystems. That means they maintain a journal of all writes to the filesystem just prior to making the actual write. In the event of a power failure the filesystem should not need to go through a very long FSCK run to scan for problems caused by the power outage. It should just _replay_ the journal recreating the last few changes the journal says were in the process of being made and continue on.

Journaling == good

If you have existing EXT2 filesystems and an EXT3-capable kernel adding the journal is easy enough.

# tune2fs -j /dev/sdc1 (sdc1 being only an example)

That adds the journal. Then edit /etc/fstab and change the line for that filesystem from EXT2 to EXT3 and remount it or reboot.

I use ext3 for the /boot and rieser for the rest.

ext3 is considered the most stable and rieser is reasonably stable and noticibly faster.

ext2 is good for linux only floppys