EXT3, Reiserfs, xfs...any comments on the filesystem types?

I recently reinstalled Knoppix yet again and chose to go with a different filesystem this time. I had been using EXT3 everytime, but read somewhere that Reiserfs and XFS are faster.

Is there a reason why choosing the file-system is left out of the newer installer script? I had to use knx-hdinstall in order to choose a different one. Let me know if the option is in there and I'm just missing it.

Also, is there any reason to avoid Reiserfs and XFS? I actually tried XFS first and the install didn't seem to finish correctly...which may have just been a coincidence. But I then tried Reiserfs and it went fine. It also does seem to be faster than EXT3 was.

If your looking for as much speed as possible, go with ext2. ext3 otherwise.

Reiserfs4 is faster than ext3, but I believe ext2 is faster than Reiserfs4. Theres also been many bugs in Reiserfs4, and it still has many bugs to be fixed.

I bailed out of using Reiser after it completely (and irrevocably) screwed up a SuSE install (in SuSE it's the default). A few days later I read something from the Gentoo folk advising that it shouldn't be used!

Although I hear that those issues are fixed, I've never (except by my own daftness) lost anything of ext2 or ext3 which -- if the worse happens -- seem to have better recovery tools.

I read that Reiser is way faster (at least for files of a certain size!) but for the moment I'll stick with ext3.

Yikes. I didn't know about that fingers. So far it's working great. I don't really have any important files in this partition, so I'm gonna give it a shot I think. If it screws me up you can say I told you so. :D

Another thing that sometimes is an issue is that reiserfs and reiser4 are superior at utilizing the available disk space.

Whatever you do, DON'T choose ext2! ReiserFs, ext3, xfs and jfs are all journaled file systems that ensure the integrity of all data stored on a partition formatted with 'em. You could in fact just turn off the power and you'd still have a good fs and you can boot without a filesystem check!
Xfs is a port from SGI Irix and Jfs was written by IBM, both are relatively new and potentially buggy. ReiserFS has been around for some time and has superior performance when dealing with lots of very small files (under 4kb IIRC) I have used it for some time with no troubles so I'd recommend it... Ext3 is actually ext2 with a simple journaling mechanism attached to it and is therefore the most bug-free journaled fs around. If you absolutely need to, you can also mount ext3 with a ext2 driver, without journaling capabilities of course. And it's not that slow either, so...

Well, it's up to you, but I'd say it's save to choose from either ReiserFS or Ext3!

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Originally Posted by EmDee

Xfs is a port from SGI Irix and Jfs was written by IBM, both are relatively new and potentially buggy.

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Xfs is actually pretty good too (although it is a bit less efficient than reiserfs at most things)
IMO jfs is the clear loser in the bunch, the only reason to use it is if you already have some jfs
filesystem running on a different OS and you need to mount it on Linux too. For any other purpose one of the others will be more suitable.

I had lots of trouble loosing data with ext2, especially with unintended re-boots or power-downs, but never with ext3.

Good Luck,
AJG

Any notions why choosing the file-system has been left out of knoppix-installer? Is it likely to be added back in later?

Well, I always set up my partitions with QTparted before using knoppix-installer, so the format is chosen ahead of time.

Regards,

--Reiserfs4 isn't even available yet, unless you've patched your kernel. Everyone's still using reiserfs v3.

--I've been using reiserfs for just about everything for years (suse 6.4?), and have only lost 1 filesystem during an OS upgrade (suse to knoppix. Nothing important on there, either; just a CD temp partition.)

--I set the ' noatime ' fstab option on everything, and if I need *speed* over space savings I set the ' notail ' flag for reiserfs. Remember, backups are your friend.

--Ext2 isn't even journalled; if you slam the system without a clean shutdown somehow, the fsck will make it clear that using ext2 for anything over 500MB filesystems isn't worth it. Yes, using straight ext2 on a 100MB Zip drive makes sense; but larger filesystems definitely benefit from journalling.

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Originally Posted by turbinater

If your looking for as much speed as possible, go with ext2. ext3 otherwise.

Reiserfs4 is faster than ext3, but I believe ext2 is faster than Reiserfs4. Theres also been many bugs in Reiserfs4, and it still has many bugs to be fixed.

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I would recommend ext3 for your /boot and /root partitions. If your boot loader can't read the /boot partition, you'll never load your kernel. If your kernel has xfs compiled as a module, it will never be able to read it out /lib/modules if it is on a xfs partition. Ext3 is readable by all (even windows with the right software). These problems may have been fixed, but keep this in mind if things break.

It don't think the performance differences matter that much to the average desktop user. They would for a heavily loaded server. But as someone said, there's no reason nowadays not to use a journaled fs. Ext3 works fine, and has the added benefit of being easily mounted as ext2 if you need to (eg with an older distro or kernel). Plus when under windows, it can be browsed with explore2fs.

After having had a little more time with the reiserfs, I'll give you my completely uninformed opinion. I like it much better than ext3. It seems to flow through the local directories much faster in Konqueror and such. I can't say programs seem to load any faster or anything, but they were fine to begin with. Also, today it ran its first file-system check. I like the reiser way of doing this FAR better than the ext3 way. It runs through the check, fixes stuff if necessary, and then boots right up. The ext3 way seemed to always make me reboot...I'm sure that's just due to my lack of knowledge on how to do it right...but even if there are commands to get things back without a reboot in ext3, it's nice not to even need them.

And after hearing Dave and some others say it's safe to use, I figure I'll probably use it from now on. Now I have a question though. How do I set it to use the reiserfs if I use knoppix-installer. QtParted has tons of different file-system types, but none of them are called reiser. Thanks.

--Reiser and ext3 both use type 83 partition (Linux). When installing, you tell the installer to use reiserfs filesystem. Or just ' mkreiserfs /dev/blah '. :)

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Originally Posted by champagnemojo

And after hearing Dave and some others say it's safe to use, I figure I'll probably use it from now on. Now I have a question though. How do I set it to use the reiserfs if I use knoppix-installer. QtParted has tons of different file-system types, but none of them are called reiser. Thanks.

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ext3 can be mounted as ext2 for recovery....
that means its easier to fix yourself.
I once toasted a reiserfs partition and I was just lost trying to recover it...
Actually Hans Reiser offered to fix it for $20 and you can't go wrong at that price except I had no telephone at the time and hence no connection. Resiserfs is particularly good at small files and handles them more efficiently.

In fairness it was my own stupididy and the Mandrake installer that screwed it up. (I had a blank compact flash installed and the installer mixed sda1 and sda2 )

XFS is very good for multimedia, in fact its was written for it.
However it uses very agressive caching and hence isn't suitable for laptops or anything that might loose power.

I keep meaning to try them all at their specialites. IE put all my media stuff which you write once/read often onto XFS (no risk if your not writing) and reiserfs for /etc .... but never seems to get round to it.

All in all I use ext3 ....
With performance issues remember the graphical tools create partitions and filessystems easily but not efficiently. For example the default ext2/ext3 reserved root space is 5%. This is way to big on a 100GB+ disk ...
tune2fs and creating filesystems by hand with mkfs gives far better control. You can expect to see up to a 50% speed increase with the right parameters and this is before using hdparm.