file system implications (possibly O/T)
 

Gents, I've seen some threads here that indicate the Slackware community as a whole is fairly knowledgeable about file systems.

If it's not too off-topic, could anyone offer an explanation of the performance implications/advantages/disadvantages of running a particular file system over another? I chose ReiserFS a long time ago and there was vaguely a reason behind it, but not a very well-informed one; in fact, I don't even recall exactly what that reason was....

So for example, what are the implications (if any) of running JFS vs Reiser?

If this doesn't belong in a Slackware forum, just smack this down, no offense taken. :)

But this is where I usually go for Linux-related info, and I run Slackware current....

I use JFS on my oldest Slackware-current box as it gives me a bit of a performance edge over EXT3. I can't comment on Reiser as I have not tried that one.

Thanks hitest.

I suspect that for most purposes, the difference is fairly small. Really just a question of curiosity more than anything.

Unless you have specific performance needs just stick with ext4 as it's a good all-around filesystem much like it's predecessors.

Reiserfs is incredibly good at storing and retrieving lots of very small files in a minimum amount of space as rapidly as possible. Depending on what applications and services you are running, it may be the best pick. For example, large mail systems that store mail for hundreds of users in maildir format would benefit from having that mail storage on reiserfs.

XFS was designed to work most efficiently with very large files. By very large I mean in the several GB range. For most purposes, it's overkill, but if you're designing some sort of open source NAS for editing say video files in the 4GB range, then XFS will be your best choice. There's been some recent clean-up work on XFS in the newest kernels which should boost performance for it in certain workloads. You might want to dig through the kernel page on http://lwn.net for more details if this is the kind of workload you foresee.

JFS is an old IBM filesystem ported to the Linux kernel. I'm unaware of any particularly good or particularly bad performances with it so I can't really comment.

In my testing reiserfs was actually higher performance than JFS in many tasks. I use JFS because I have used it for a while and I've had no issues with it. If you've been using reiserfs for a while and have not had issues, then I say keep using it. I don't like the ext* filesystems for many reasons.

I was hoping they would release a fsck for btrfs, but it looks like they don't care about stability.

Some benchmarks:
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...38_large&num=1
my benchmark
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...k-data-900888/
older
http://linuxgazette.net/122/piszcz.html
http://www.t2-project.org/zine/1/

Excellent information, and even though it was impossible to describe exactly what I was looking for, this is probably it. I've read enough to know the very basics - such as that XFS handles large files better than Reiserfs - but also wanted to hear some practical observations.

For my purposes it most likely doesn't make much difference at the moment, but maybe it will next time I have to do a fresh install. Now I'll make a more informed choice.

Thanks.

There's a good article about XFS here. The comments section is informative as well. I think it's fair to say XFS is now an all-round filesystem, not one just for large files. Needless to say every filesystem will have its detractors. The important thing to remember is that filesystem options are not a substitute for backups.

Another thing to bear in mind is the attention paid to the various filesystems by kernel developers. In a comment follow-up to his article here, Eric Sandeen shows that XFS has had more commits since 2.6.12 than any of the other major filesystems. RH has been showing steady commitment to XFS in the kernel. Question marks hang over ext4 and ReiserFS - Ted T'so, maintainer of ext4 has acknowledged that the filesystem is a stopgap on the way to btrfs, and the former ReiserFS maintainer has had more serious issues to deal with.

I use both XFS and JFS, and with their decades-old pedigree they are safe and scalable for most purposes. But again, no filesystem is a proper substitute for backups.