[NTLUG:Discuss] Time to switch away from ReiserFS?

[Leroy Tennison]

Chris Cox wrote:
> Leroy Tennison wrote:
> ...
>> Hope this doesn't open a can of worms but, what is it about reiserfs
>> that makes it suitable for true enterprise deployment where no other
>> file system is?
> 
> It's about the only filesystem that can be dynamically resized
> online in EVERY situation (and QUICKLY).  Very fast filesystem
> creates even on very large filesytems.  Handles directories with
> tons of files very well.  Doesn't fragment much (most I've ever
> seen is about 9%... I've seen double that with ext3).
> 
> XFS is usually growable... but can't be shrunk (not that you
> need to shrink a filesystem that often... just a nit).  There
> was a fairly recent bug involving stack sizes in the kernel,
> XFS and LVM2.... I think those issues have been resolved.
> 
> We've been running two NAS'd home directory areas of 800G
> each on top of reiserfs for about 7 years.  We have other
> reiserfs filesystems of even greater size used in our
> disk to disk backup, some of which might be several years
> old (but in general, a lot of that changed as we moved
> to different storage devices).
> 
> I have ext3 filesystems that exhibit behavior that is
> UNEXPLAINED.  Yes... they are trashed.  In particular
> it was a RHEL 4 machine.  There are directories where
> you can't create files at a certain depth or lower... but
> you can create files in other trees with equal depth
> on the exact same filesystem (bizarre).  Filesystem
> passes fsck.
> 
> 
> 
>> While we are on the subject, from what I've heard ext3 journals both
>> metadata and data while the other file systems don't.  Why is this?
> 
> It's an option... and it's an option on reiserfs on any relatively
> modern distro (data=ordered (default, same as ext3 default), data=writeback
> (just metadata like old reiserfs), data=journal (full data journaling)).
> 
> There was a time when reiserfs did only metadata journaling and
> it wasn't ordered journaling... that one was fixed a few years back.
> The journal (full data journaling) option is relatively
> new.
> 
> Remember that enterprise commercial journaled filesystems often just
> do metadata journaling (like old resierfs, XFS and JFS).
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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Chris,

Thanks for the reply.  As a follow on, what are the pros and cons of
data journaling?  That's more or less where I was going with this
question but didn't make that clear.