On my FC3 box, I'm currently using ext3 for all my drives since that's the default, though I learnt today that you can pass a filesystem switch to the initial 'linux' command during install. eg. linux reiserfs, linux xfs, linux jfs, etc.

I know that ext3 can be pretty slow when doing certain operations so I'm interested in these other ones (reiserfs, xfs, and jfs). What are the pros and cons of each one in terms of stability and speed? And which filesystems do you use?

I use reiserfs. See at least http://navindra.blogspot.com/2004/10/kde-d...le-failure.html . Namesys.com also has some benchmarks.

I haven't researched this in a while, but when I did, XFS was the most mature and stable. That was about a year ago.
I used XFS on my Debian box for my /home partition and hosted a Samba server on it among other things. It performed very well.

Cool. I backed up my /home partition and reformatted it to XFS. It seems to be running ok. I was going to try reiserfs but I heard that it had some bugs in it that in some cases led to data corruption so I didn't want to risk it.

The disadvantage of XFS are that it only journals metadata and that
you cant have a boot block on an XFS partition.
Otherwise it's very stable and featureful. It is also very well
suited for handling large files, as is common with video and audio.

hmm....is that bad? I know nothing about filesystems

Is XFS also better when you have thousands of little small files? Or is reiserfs superior in that respect?

When a filesystem only journals metadata it means that
it only keeps track of data about data. That is for
example a files name and size. It won't keep track of
it's content. So you could, if you're unlucky, end
up with an inconsistent file or a file filled with nulls
if it wasn't flushed to disk before a computer crash.
If you write to a file it is'nt immediately written
to disk, it's written to buffers in memory which
are flushed out to the disk in intervals.
It is however faster to only journal metadata and it
keeps filesystem consistency which is what is most important.

For instance, I used to frequently compile KDE,
which strains the computer quite heavily. At
that time I also had some faulty memory that
I wasn't aware of. When compiling KDE gcc generates
dependancy files that often consisted only of nulls
if the computer crashed during the compilation.
Because of this I had to remove all the invalid
dependancy files and start the compilation all over.
I realise this isn't how most people use their computers
so it won't usually be a problem.

If you have "thousands of little small files" then I think
that reiserfs is the better choice. That is one thing
that reiserfs is particularly good at.

I use ext3 myself, it can be configured to journal
everything and has proven itself over a long period
of time as ext2. Ext3 is just ext2 + journalling.
There are also a lot more tools for ext2/3 than
the other filesystems. It ain't the fastest of the
bunch but fast enough for most usage.

Choices, choices, choices :-)

Thanks for the info. Hopefully I don't encounter those types of problems

Out of interest, I found this article about XFS. Looks like reiserfs journals metadata only too.

btw. how do you manage to get 0 posts after all this time?

Yes, that seems to be a good article about the different file systems
and their pros and cons.

I have absolutely no idea why I have 0 posts. :-)
I have not posted much but definately more than zero.

I assumed that a long-time member like you would know by now that posts in the off-topic forum don't count. This has been mentioned several times before.

And apparently beej has only posted in the off-topic forum until now, so that would explain it.

Comparison of files systems.

Warning this IMHO.

EXT2
+ Well supported
+ Very much a tested file system like lames -alt--preset's
+ It does not use much ram.
- It allocats files in fixed block sizes. 4kbyte blocks on most drives.
- It's some times slow
- It does not Journal data or meta data

EXT3
+ Very safe it journals both Meta data and Data in its journal.
+ Well supported
+ Very much a tested file system like lames -alt--preset's
+ It does not use much ram.
- It allocats files in fixed block sizes. 4kbyte blocks on most drives.
- It's some times slow

Reiserfs 3.6
+ Fast with small files
+ Well supported
+ It does not use a fixed block size which means it does not waste space
+ It journals Metadata.
+ It saves meta data efficienty
- It does not Journal data.

Reiserfs 4 (New)
+ Very fast (Aparently)
+ It does not use a fixed block size which means it does not waste space
+ It's "atomic" which means that it does not do things by half.
+ It journals Metadata and data.
+ It saves meta data efficienty
- It new. Bugs need finding and fixing.
- Not supprted by distros yet.

JFS
+ Very fast
+ Well supported
+ It journals meta data
+ It saves meta data efficienty
I cannot comment on the downsides as I have not used it much

XFS
+Very fast
+ It journals meta data
+ It saves meta data efficienty
I cannot comment on the downsides as I have not used it much

FAT32 (VFAT)
+ Fast on limited Hard ware like portatbles.
- Terrible space wasting. It saves in blocks of 16 or 32 if you have large HD.
- It does not Journal
- It gets fragmented quickly
- It does not support permissions like the other FS's.

I would recommend Reiserfs 3.6 becuase it quick and quite safe. As always with any
FS is that you may have a black out wile doing something that requires a lot HD
activity and somes files may be lost. There is always time to backup so if you have
some very important files back them up rather that learning the hard way.

Ah, I didn't notice that since I don't post in this forum that often.

neutral_00: Thanks for the info.