partition size problem
 

Hi all

I reformatted my partitions to EXT3 from ReiserFS and reinstalled Slackware. But strangely the partitions seem to have shrunk!! I am posting the results of the command "df -h" while it was ReiserFS & while it is EXT3. Please let me know what is going on.

One last thing, the default inode size for EXT3 was "4096 bytes" but I changed it to "1024 bytes" during installation.

Thanks

for ReiserFS
***************
bash-3.00# df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/hda5 283M 104M 179M 37% /
/dev/hda6 48M 37M 11M 78% /boot
/dev/hda7 283M 47M 237M 17% /home
/dev/hda8 1.2G 676M 470M 60% /opt
/dev/hda9 283M 33M 250M 12% /root
/dev/hda10 283M 33M 251M 12% /tmp
/dev/hda11 2.4G 1.6G 810M 67% /usr
/dev/hda12 957M 50M 907M 6% /var
**************
for EXT3
**************
bash-3.00$ df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/hda5 247M 73M 161M 32% /
/dev/hda6 42M 8.4M 31M 22% /boot
/dev/hda7 247M 19M 215M 9% /home
/dev/hda8 1002M 723M 222M 77% /opt
/dev/hda9 247M 8.6M 225M 4% /root
/dev/hda10 247M 8.1M 225M 4% /tmp
/dev/hda11 2.1G 1.7G 226M 89% /usr
/dev/hda12 838M 34M 756M 5% /var
***************

ext3 is less efficient with disk space than reiserfs.

I dont know if others had the same experience but changing the ext3 default 4096 caused frequent error messages for me eventually.

The ext3 filesystem (which is really the ext2 filesystem with journalling) uses space to create inodes which reduces the amount of free space. The inode "sizing" option doesn't actually size the inodes but tells mke2fs how many inodes to allocate. The dafault of 4096 allocates one inode for every 4096 bytes of drive space. When you "resized" the inodes, you allocated one inode for every 1024 bytes of drive spaces, taking four times as much space than if you had left the default.

Some space is also used for the journal file unless you move it elsewhere with the -J option.

Reiserfs is the fs you need to use for all you linux installs. It has built in file journaling and is WAY more effecient than both ext2 and ext3. Just make sure if you recompile your kernel you compile in ReiserFS support and you are golden. I have never had a problem with ReiserFS aside from having a bad HDD. Also I would never change the inode size, this usually leads to BAD problems with the FS.

Thanks everyone

But strangely, my system now boots 15 seconds faster!! It used to take 55 seconds, now it takes 40 seconds. Apart from that I haven't noticed any other significant performance benefits. But I would like to know if there is any way to measure FS performance.

As for changing the default inode size; haven't yet got into any trouble, so far so good.