Re: [gentoo-user] Advice/best practices for a new Gentoo installation

[Willie Wong]

On Wed, Mar 03, 2010 at 12:52:55PM +0100, Alex Schuster wrote:
> Neil Bothwick writes:
>
> > On Tue, 2 Mar 2010 10:35:42 +0100, Alex Schuster wrote:
> > > > - best filesystem for portage? something compressed or with small
> > > > cluster size maybe.
> > >
> > > I think reiserfs with the notail option is recommended.
> >
> > The data I've seen indicates that ext2 is fastest, that's what I use.
>
> I thought the small files of the portage tree especially profit from the
> notail option in reiserfs? Did you change the block size?

You mean the other way around, right? reiser defaults to tail-packing,
which can cause problems with GRUB and LILO, which is why notail is an
option which turns off tail-packing for those crazy enough to use
reiser on /boot. 

If you use notail on the portage tree, you get rid of that advantage,
then Neil is absolutely correct: there's not too much point in
journaling the portage tree, and if you actively make reiser
not-competitive on the storage-space direction, the only metric left
to compare is speed, and ext2 is faster. 

Incidentally, if you are willing to sacrifice speed for space, then a
sparsefile for /usr/portage may also be an option. 

W
-- 
Willie W. Wong                                     wwong@××××××××××××××.edu
Data aequatione quotcunque fluentes quantitae involvente fluxiones invenire 
         et vice versa   ~~~  I. Newton