[Techtalk] Journalling file systems.

David Merrill david at lupercalia.net
Sat Oct 27 13:48:16 EST 2001


On Sat, Oct 27, 2001 at 09:45:24AM +1000, Mary Gardiner wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> Well, journalling file systems seem to be all the rage at the moment :)
> and I have to say that I would be grateful not to have to sit through an
> fsck every time a circuit breaker triggers.
> 
> At the moment, I'm using ext2fs and vfat (I'm not intending to drop the
> vfat, my Windows partition would be unhappy... :) )
> 
> I've been exposed to a three way holy war between xfs users, reiserfs
> users and ext3fs users, but not a very informative one.
> 
> I'm looking for a good rundown on their comparitive strengths.

All three are relatively robust and mature in their latest versions.
IMO the backward compatibility of ext3 makes it an excellent choice
when upgrading an existing filesystem, unless you really need the
small file performance of reiserfs. xfs has some nice advanced
features, but you probably don't need them. Same for the reiserfs
performance in some areas. Unless it's a stressed server, you probably
won't notice much difference. So I would go with ext3 just because
it's the easiest and involves the least investment.

That said, I installed reiserfs on my roommate's workstation because
it was a new install and SuSE supported it out of the box, configuring
it at installation.

-- 
Dr. David C. Merrill                     http://www.lupercalia.net
Linux Documentation Project                   david at lupercalia.net
Collection Editor & Coordinator            http://www.linuxdoc.org

The Microsoft corporate culture can be broken down into four key parts: a
tremendous work ethic; Bill Gates is always right; an us-versus-them
mentality; and Bill Gates is always right.
	--Michael Gartenberg, Gartner Group Vice President.




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