1 |
On 18/09/2013 16:09, Alan McKinnon wrote: |
2 |
> On 18/09/2013 16:05, Peter Humphrey wrote: |
3 |
>> On Wednesday 18 Sep 2013 14:52:30 Ralf Ramsauer wrote: |
4 |
>> |
5 |
>>> In my opinion, reiser is a bit outdated ... |
6 |
>> |
7 |
>> What is the significance of its date? I use reiserfs on my Atom box for /var, |
8 |
>> /var/cache/squid and /usr/portage, and on my workstation for /usr/portage and |
9 |
>> /home/prh/.VirtualBox. It's never given me any trouble at all. |
10 |
> |
11 |
> |
12 |
> Sooner or later, reiser is going to bitrot. The ReiserFS code itself |
13 |
> will not change, but everything around it and what it plugs into will |
14 |
> change. When that happens (not if - when), there is no-one to fix the |
15 |
> bug and you will find yourself up the creek sans paddle |
16 |
> |
17 |
> An FS is not like a widget set, you can't really live with and |
18 |
> workaround any defects that develop. When an FS needs patching, it needs |
19 |
> patching, no ifs and buts. Reiser may nominally have a maintainer but in |
20 |
> real terms there is effectively no-one |
21 |
> |
22 |
> Circumstances have caused ReiserFS to become a high-risk scenario and |
23 |
> even though it might perform faultlessly right now, continued use should |
24 |
> be evaluated in terms of that very real risk. |
25 |
|
26 |
Another problem with ReiserFS is its intrinsic dependency on the BKL |
27 |
(big kernel lock). Aside from hampering scalability, it necessitated |
28 |
compromise when the time came to eliminate the BKL: |
29 |
|
30 |
https://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=8ebc423 |
31 |
|
32 |
Note the performance loss introduced by the patch; whether that was |
33 |
addressed I do not know. |
34 |
|
35 |
In my view, ReiserFS is only useful for saving space through tail |
36 |
packing. Unfortunately, tail packing makes it slower still (an issue |
37 |
that was supposed to be resolved for good in Reiser4). |
38 |
|
39 |
In general, I would recommend ext4 or xfs as the go-to filesystems these |
40 |
days. |
41 |
|
42 |
--Kerin |