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>>>> I wouldn't use XFS unless |
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>>>> it was all that was left. I tried it once a while back and found out it |
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>>>> does not like power failures at all. Each time I had a power failure, I |
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>>>> had to reinstall from scratch. |
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>>> Hmm, I use it because of its resistance to power failures. When was it that |
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>>> you had such problems? |
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>> Its been a while but it happened several times. I just got tired of |
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>> having to reinstall every time the power blinked. Turned out the wire |
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>> was loose on the transformer so they blinked a lot, every couple days or |
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>> so. I think it was Mandrake 9.2. |
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>> |
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>> I have had a power failure or two with reiserfs and it recovered. It |
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>> did the check thing but ran fine. |
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>> |
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>> Just my experience. Your mileage may vary. |
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> I have a similar story, but for me it was JFS instead of XFS. I will |
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> never, ever, ever use JFS for anything again. I had XFS on a file |
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> server RAID box with a failing power supply and it died over and over |
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> and the FS stayed functional, so YMMV indeed. (I haven't tried reiser, |
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> I'm still scared about the corruption stories from years ago.) |
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> |
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> I suppose if you ask enough people, there will be horror stories about |
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> every filesystem. |
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I use reiserfs and I twice got serious filesystem corruptions after |
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crashes, and one was very serious. It is unclear whether this was |
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reiserfs's fault or the hardware. You see, I was using athcool to save |
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electricity, and it seems that when the bit "Disconnect enable when |
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STPGNT detected" is set on the Northbridge (this is what athcool does) |
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and you are using a PixelView PV-M4900 FM.RC (specially if you are |
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recording tv - with mencoder - as opposed to just viewing it - with |
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mplayer), your computer malfunctions. |
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I was able to recover much of the data with reiserfsck --rebuild-tree, |
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but some of the files had part of their content replaced with a string |
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of null bytes. I heard somewhere that reiserfs is infamous for |
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replacing file content with a string of null bytes, so maybe this is |
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indeed reiserfs fault, and not just bad hardware. |
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|
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By the way, I chose reiserfs (some 3 years ago I believe) because of |
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its speed fame, but now, thinking of it, there are only four computer |
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activities that make my system slow: |
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1) launch heavy programs such as firefox (when not in cache) |
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2) compile software |
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3) view certain web pages in firefox |
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4) encode video |
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|
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Now, since I usually compile software in a tmpfs, I guess the |
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filesystem makes nearly zero difference. Video encoding is obviously |
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bound by CPU, cache and RAM speed, not filesystem. Web rendering is |
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also hardly affected by filesystem . And launching programs means |
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mostly reading files, and would reiserfs be significantly faster than |
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ext3 for this, specially considering that my system is minimalist and |
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the root partition is only 7% used? |
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|
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So it seems I should not have chosen reiserfs, which has a fame of |
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being less safe than ext3, and certainly has less software support |
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than ext3. The next time I format my root partition, I will choose |
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ext3 (then move to ext4 when it is stable). |
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|
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-- |
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Software is like sex: it is better when it is free - Linus Torvalds |
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