Howto: Reiser4 Filesystem

I wrote something up for the curious (not for novices):

http://forums.xandros.com/viewtopic.php?t=16397

reiserfs a few years ago, I'll never touch it again, but I don't try to dissuade anyone else from using it.

I strongly advise everyone NOT to run Reiser4.

Some background:

I'm a SysAdmin, and we needed to move to a file system that could handle partitions greater than 2 terabytes. That left Reiser4, JFS, and XFS. Because our systems had all been on Reiser3 with no real problems we opted for Reiser4. Test scenarios worked OK, but once Reiser4 went into production we got killed. Everyday (for a week) at our peak activity time, our system load would climb past 10 or higher and basically freeze everyone out until we rebooted.

After 4 days of this we went into emergency mode, built a kernel with JFS, since then we've had 100+ day uptime, with nary a single system hiccup. In fact, with JFS our users noticed significant speed increases.

I know, I should be flogged for not conducting the stress test necessary for live deployment, but we did what we could. I do know however, that the kernel was compiled correctly and Reiser4 was technically "working". It's just piss-poor under a heavy workload.

I wholeheartedly recommend JFS to any admins out there...

The unique features are enough to keep my interest up.

OTOH, I wonder if the entirely atomic nature of Reiser4 was slowing you down, of if it was something more transient (like a bug). Namesys would probably consider your experience with Reiser4 very valuable. You should write them about it if you haven't already.

XFS too. Supposedly bulletproof.

My experience with XFS has been absolutely excellent on SGI hardware with IRIX, incredible i/o, great tools, definately an enterprise class fs. I put together a slack based file server for my friend's pro tools studio, to serve the A and B rooms - and even though linux is by no means as powerful as IRIX when it comes to i/o, its handled itself very nicely. If it weren't for some bad nic's and network collisions a few weeks into the server's life, it would still be up without a crash since day 1. It works great with raid-5 btw. XFS is perfect for huge (1 gb or more) files - audio and video for example, which of course is what sgi designed it for. imo its the only fs to run for mission critical situations if you're using linux. its a shame redhat keeps promoting ext3 as a comparable solution.

IS the IRIX fs -- always hase been.

SGI released it under a free license in 2000.

Reiser4 is a disaster. It does not play right under all conditions. I mulled over the various journalling file systems and stuck with EXT3. It's not the fastest, but it's stable and it works. With the dir_index option, it is pretty quick, too. I just don't want to mess with the sync problems with XFS and Reiser is too damned risky with the latest kernels. Until these issues are resolved, I'll stick with stability.

BTW, you're the second person I've seen this week who likes JFS. I'm going to have to look at that again.