Re: [gentoo-user] [OT] filesystems

[Volker Armin Hemmann]

On Mittwoch 26 November 2008, Jorge Peixoto de Morais Neto wrote:
> > I ran ext3 on a dirvish backup server - lasted two days, resierfs is
> > still going after a couple of years.  dirvish REALLY hammers a file
> > system.
> >
> > Participating in a few of these discussions over the years has brought
> > home to me that YMMV really does apply to filesystems. Your usage, data
> > profile, power/hardware stability are all variables and any two peoples
> > experience almost assuredly wont be the same.
>
> In this discussion multiple people have defended reiserfs as a safe
> filesystem. This is novel to me. Reiserfs is always bashed as being an
> unsafe filesystem, developed with only speed in mind; a filesystem to
> be used only by childish ricers or in specific situations where
> filesystem performance is critical. For example, once I tried
> genkernel (but did not like it and decide to go on with manual kernel
> maintainance) and this message was in an ewarn
>         ewarn "This package is known to not work with reiser4.  If you
> are running"
> 	ewarn "reiser4 and have a problem, do not file a bug.  We know it does
> not" ewarn "work and we don't plan on fixing it since reiser4 is the one
> that is" ewarn "broken in this regard.  Try using a sane filesystem like
> ext3 or" ewarn "even reiser3."

reiser4 and reiserfs are two completly unrelated file systems.

reiserfs is the oldest journaling fs for linux. It had been broken in early 
2.4 development by careless vm patches which weren't tested prior to 
inclusion. This early breakage still haunts reiserfs.

If you look at lkml, there are regularly reports about problems with ext3 and 
xfs. But very few with reiserfs - and none with jfs because nobody is using 
it.


> They explicitly claim reiser4 is broken and insane, and their wording
> implicitly suggests that ext3 is better than reiser3.

And I claim that genkernel is a broken piece of shit, so what?
ext3 has enough problems - look at lkml. After that you might rethink claims 
that ext3 is 'stable'. 

>
> But in this discussion people are saying reiserfs is in fact safer than
> ext3.

experience. Obervation. I haven't seen reiserfs problems that were not the 
hardware's fault.

>
> I have not dived in the Linux developers x Hans Reiser battle, so I
> don't know which side is right and which side is guilty, but think
> that either

Hans Reiser has zero people skills and clashed with people who also have zero 
people skills. Add some misunderstandings (like plugins - they aren't 
plugins), a fat 'it is not developed here' syndrom and some bias and you get a 
nice explosive mess.
HR is completly out of the picture. Edward is doing reiser4 development today 
and he is doing a good job.


> A) reiserfs is a good filesystem, but the battle between Hans Reiser
> and Linux developers caused people to dislike reiserfs for
> non-technical reasons.

reiserfs is a good filesystem that was broken by third parties. Btw, some days 
ago Nick Piggin broke reiser4 in -mm. And instead of fixing it, they disabled 
reiser4. Which tells you a lot about the 'if you have something in kernel, it 
will be fixed when changes break it' lie.

> or
> B) reiserfs is a bad filesystem but for some reason a lot of reiserfs
> fans appeared in this thread

reiserfs is a stable filesystem. For ages no new features have been added. 
Unlike ext3 only bug fixes have been went in. The problem is, that redhat was 
behind ext3 - and redhat pushs all their stuff, while agressively attacking 
everything not made by them.


> Note: don't talk about the unfortunate horrible story of Hans' family,
> the details of which we don't know. People were bashing reiserfs (both
> versions 3 and 4) well before that.

because they don't understand either. reiser4 has tons of nice and good ideas 
- but some people saw Reiser's name and went beserk.