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Linux File Systems

N

Netopia

Diamond Member
Greetings Ladies and Gents.

Over the last several installs of Linux, I've always just used ext3 for the important stuff and ext2 for storage, download, junk partitions and also for /tmp. I don't know if this was a good or bad philosophy, but I figured that since there's a supposed performance hit for the journaling in ext3, I'd make not critical stuff ext2.

Anyway... I've noticed that there are actually quite a few differen FS's that one can use with Linux. The aforementioned plus vFAT I'm familiar with... but what are the pluses and minuses of all of the other various FS's out there? Is there a reason that I should be using one of them in lieu of ext3?

Thanks,

Joe
 
I'm using XFS for nearly everything. It has better performance, built-in quota support and isn't prone to mess up if not cleanly unmounted.
Of course, I will give Reiser4 a test drive when it arrives, XFS isn't very strong at deleting small files and such.
 
XFS is supposedly good for big media files. Reiser is supposedly good for dealing with lots of small files (like a mail server). ext3 is good for compatability, and ext2 is worthless. 😉 I don't think there is any discernable performance hit from journalling in ext3.

BTW - you can easily slap a journal on an ext2 filesystem and make it ext3. Just run "tune2fs -j /dev/hd<whatever>", and change ext2 to ext3 in /etc/fstab for that partition, so it's mounted as ext3.
 
Originally posted by: BingBongWongFooey

BTW - you can easily slap a journal on an ext2 filesystem and make it ext3. Just run "tune2fs -j /dev/hd<whatever>", and change ext2 to ext3 in /etc/fstab for that partition, so it's mounted as ext3.
Click to expand...

Another cool file system trick, you can mount an ext3 partition as ext2. It'll run without the journal. Useful if the journal ever gets corrupted I guess 🙂
 
Originally posted by: Derango
Originally posted by: BingBongWongFooey

BTW - you can easily slap a journal on an ext2 filesystem and make it ext3. Just run "tune2fs -j /dev/hd<whatever>", and change ext2 to ext3 in /etc/fstab for that partition, so it's mounted as ext3.
Click to expand...

Another cool file system trick, you can mount an ext3 partition as ext2. It'll run without the journal. Useful if the journal ever gets corrupted I guess 🙂
Click to expand...

Yeah, that's why it's good for compatability. Partition magic can even modify ext2 partitions. 🙂
 
Over the last several installs of Linux, I've always just used ext3 for the important stuff and ext2 for storage, download, junk partitions and also for /tmp. I don't know if this was a good or bad philosophy, but I figured that since there's a supposed performance hit for the journaling in ext3, I'd make not critical stuff ext2.
Click to expand...

It's not that cut and dry, the journaling can actually cause performance increases in some cases cause it can order writes better. Basically I don't think there's any reason to use ext2 now.

Of course, I will give Reiser4 a test drive when it arrives, XFS isn't very strong at deleting small files and such.
Click to expand...

I will avoid Reiser4 for quite a while, the past track record they have doesn't instill me with any confidence.

But I do, and will continue to, use XFS for everything possible. The deletions being slow is a little annoying but I don't do it that much, it's really just noticable when I'm deleting a kernel source tree.

The XFS userland tools are also years head of almost all the others in the Linux world. And now that XFS will be in 2.4.25 there will be no reason not to use it.
 
BTW, you might want to take a look at tmpfs (I started using it after installing Debian to 128MB USB stick (put /tmp and /var/cache/apt to tmpfs)).
If one is doing extracting/compiling/installing from /tmp it's quite a speed-up. But then, I've got 1.5GB RAM.
 
BTW, you might want to take a look at tmpfs (I started using it after installing Debian to 128MB USB stick (put /tmp and /var/cache/apt to tmpfs)).
If one is doing extracting/compiling/installing from /tmp it's quite a speed-up. But then, I've got 1.5GB RAM.
Click to expand...

You have to watch, somethings like VMWare and Mozilla use tmp for really large files.
 
According to the gcc man page, you could mount tmpfs at, say, /tmp/build, and gcc will use it if you put /tmp/build in $TMPDIR. I might give that a whirl myself.
 
According to the gcc man page, you could mount tmpfs at, say, /tmp/build, and gcc will use it if you put /tmp/build in $TMPDIR. I might give that a whirl myself.
Click to expand...
This all sounds interesting... it's probably even more interesting than it sounds, but for a neophyte such as myself... it would bear some explaining as to what exactly it all means!!! 🙂

Joe
 
This all sounds interesting... it's probably even more interesting than it sounds, but for a neophyte such as myself... it would bear some explaining as to what exactly it all means!!!
Click to expand...

If you set /tmp to use tmpfs or ramfs it can easily fill all your memory if you have a lot of temp files. tmpfs can be pushed out to swap but ramfs can't, so that's another consideration. But some apps, I have no idea how many, respect the $TMPDIR variable so that you can have them use another directory instead of /tmp, Bing was saying that if you mounted /tmp/build as tmpfs or ramfs then told gcc to use that as it's temp direcotry it could speed up builds but never using disk temp space. I doubt the speed increase would be that much though unless you have really slow disks, in my experience compiles are more CPU limited anyway. And on top of that gcc has a -pipe option that skips a lot of temp files by piping the output from tool to tool.
 
I see one of my problems in appreciating the level you guys are speaking at... I'm still about 70% GUI-weenie and about 30% CLI-man. Perhaps I should put together a machine that I don't need for any distinct purpose and use it to practice doing compiles and makes and costomizing the kernel and stuff... just to become comfortable. Half the reason that I never delve into these things is that by the time I find something I'd like to try, I can't afford to put the machine at risk because of having put it to work!

Joe
 
Compiling things isn't that important any more with all the binary packages available, but it does come up once in a while so it's a good idea to have atleast some idea what you're doing. Generally starting by reading the README file is a good thing, contrary to the Windows world documentation is relevant in the Linux world as long as it exists, every once in a while you'll get a project that's new or something and the README just says "<WRITEME>" or something.

If you don't want to put together a new machine and your machine has a good amount of memory get a copy of VMWare, it's one of the few closed source applications I couldn't live without.

GUIs aren't a bad thing as long as they work well and the problem I have with most of MS' configuration UIs is that they leave out 3/4 of the available options in order to keep things simple. Well that and it's a PITA to script GUI work.
 
IMO the best way to kickstart your learning is to install a "non newbie" distro, and use it as a workstation.
Getting Debian(for example) up and running with a basic setup should be simple enough, and as you go along, tweaking and messing with things, all the little things that make the big picture will come.

Try installing Debian 3.0 on an nForce2 based mobo for example, an excellent, if somewhat masochistic way to learn about compiling kernels, messing with modules, and so forth.
Not recommended for the unpatient though(that's me).
 
Heck... Fedora on an nForce2 was bad enough! I never could get the Realtek built in NIC to work... nor the add-in Gigabit RealTek NIC I added. Through an intel NIC back in and everything was sweet.

Weird thing with the RealTek NIC's is that they would be discovered while linux was loading, but then in the GUI it would say that they didn't really exist! Go figure!

Joe
 
i use ext3 since slackware 8.0, and i noticed no speed issue ...
just i can now have a crash and no data loss ... and to mount as an ext2 when needed ...

matheus
 
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