Linux FS for server

A

anths

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jun 14, 2001
Messages
491
Hey guys.

I am currently running a small server off of Win XP Pro and want to switch it over to gentoo. Which File System would you use for the storage side and system disks? I have been reading about the four main file systems and it seems to come down to preference so I am trying to skip trying all four out and just asking which one you prefer!

Anthony
 
Reiserfs has been nothing but rock solid and fast for me. Just remember to use ext2 or ext3 for your /boot if you are going with gentoo.
 
reiserfs is pretty quick, faster than ext2/3 esp for lots of small files. jfs and xfs are good for very large files but not small ones. i would stick with reiser, been using it for a while 2~ years not one plroblem so far
 
I was thinking about going with xfs for my harddrives with movies on them and larger files (disc iso's, etc) and reiserFS for my music harddrives and other smaller files. I will definately be using ext3 on /boot.

With reiserFS and xfs will I be able to serve to windows XP boxes?
 
i'd throw up another vote for reiserfs.

it seems to have more support than xfs (i.e. random boot disks, etc).

windows computers connecting to your server do not access the hard drive directly. once you have samba set up, the windows pc's will communicate through samba which in turn will use the native os to read the hard drive.

however, if you drop a hard drive with reiserfs into a windows computer, windows will be unable to read it.
 
Yea I definately had a brain fart when I typed that last post... Samba controls all the serving so everything should be useable regardless of the file system on the linux box - atleast that is how I understand it.
 
Reiser all the way. I just realized the power of ReiserFS + LVM today. Dynamically sizable partitions & with Reiser you can grow the filesystems without any downtime. Hot Shit.
 
Yep... that's the reason to run reiser. HOWEVER, on some chipsets (and it varies quite a bit the variables involved) an unexpected crash can cause some pretty serious loss of data situations. It's not consistent, so my guess is that it's caused by differences in hw.

For example... on my Tyan S2468UGN with an LSI Megraid Elite 1600, if Linux crashed badly, the file systems would get trashed EVEN if all I was doing was merely reading stuff!! Same thing happens with the Compaq n610c laptop. Result is having to do a --rebuild-tree on the reiserfsck and it places TONS (sometimes) of files into the orphaned lost+found area (entire directories... even if the machine really wasn't under ANY load...weird).

However, on my w2100z, which I've crashed badly as well a few times, NO corruptions. Likewise my Compaq wx6000 box has never seen a corruption.

With that said, my experience is that there is a low lying bug in ext2 (yes.. I said ext2... not just ext3) that causes corruption over time (in other words, whereas reiserfs is honest about corruptions, I think ext2 is lying sometimes). Can't prove it, just a hunch. So I stick with reiserfs for the flexibility.

I use reiserfs for most things. As long as you don't cause a bad crash, you'll be fine anyhow... it's just an issue for those who tend to like to punish their kernels! You'll probably hear more reiserfs horror stories, but again, I really do think that ext2/3 filesystems tend to say things are ok... when really they're not.
 
I like reiserfs for the most part. However, we're having corruption problems with reiserfs at work, which we think is due to Retrospect doing some bad things we haven't yet pinned down. If we back up the large (1+ TB) reiser-formatted partition, problems are likely to occur. If we don't, things are fine. We've hammered the hell out of the drives and the machine trying to reproduce the corruption with regular access, so the file system appears to be fine...Just don't use Retrospect on it.

Oh, and reiser's recovery tools suck. Don't count on recovering any files in "damaged" areas of a reiser partition.

I like XFS. My Linux box (I have one, and I'm not happy about it) is all XFS. The recovery tools for XFS are more mature, etc.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top