Linux Filesystem?

[Toastedlightly]

What filesystem should i use? Ther are those special linux ones, and a FAT32. EC2, EC3 (or something like that) and FAT32. WHich oNE!?

 

[esun]

From my (somewhat limited) Linux experience, there are the following choices:

ext2, ext3, ReiserFS, XFS

I think there might be some others, but these are the most common. Ext3 is supposed to be reliable, ReiserFS is fast, and XFS is...something else. Anyway, each has its advantages and disadvantages from what I've read. Personally I chose ReiserFS since it's supposed to be fast and pretty reliable as of the later renditions.

 

[Ahkorishaan]

ReiserFS is the best out there overall right now. Ext3 has shown to be a bit on the slow side, and XFS isn't really necessary. The Reiser filesystem recently recieved an upgrade. So you may want to check out Reiser4. Only a few distros have it pre-installed though.

 

[drag]

XFS or Ext3 are the ones I run.

Reiser4 is a complete new file system... reiser doesn't realy do "upgrades" he basicly redos everything from scratch. It'll be a while before it will be usefull for the average person.

 

[sciencewhiz]

Ext3 is the most backwards compatible, and is the default for most distributions. Unless you have other pressing needs, you should use it, especially since it sounds you have no clue what is going on.

ReiserFS3 is very fast for small files. There were bugs with early implementations that turned many people off to it. It should be safe now.

ReiserFS4 is very new, and is very neat and has a lot of great features. I would not recommend you use it yet, though. Ahkorishaan, which distro's have it pre-installed?

XFS is very fast for very large files.

 

[Nothinman]

I use XFS and ext3 everywhere, I wouldn't use reiserfs for anything that I actually cared about.

 

[EmperorRob]

I've never had a problem from my Debian install on reiser. Many power outages but never lost any data. Ext3 is slow. I'd really like to try out reiser4 but I don't feel like re-installing Oracle. Grub has some trouble w/xfs.

 

[Ahkorishaan]

I'm fairly sure Yoper has it in it's latest iteration, but I could of course be wrong. Ubuntu could possibly have it as well. None of the big distro have it yet, it's far too expirimental.

I should add a disclaimer to all my posts. I think it is in Yoper, but I may be wrong. If I am, then oh well...

[edit] Yep I'm wrong, Yoper supports it through the kernel, but it's not an install option. You must set it up after install.[/edit]

 

[drag]

Ext3 in addition to being "most compatable" thru it's backward compatability with Ext2, it is probably the most reliable. XFS, JFS, etc work very hard to ensure that your filing system does not corrupt, but they don't do much for individual files. Reiser4 ensures data protection thru having fully atomic file actions, but reiser4 isn't a proven filing system yet.

This is the reason that Redhat still ships it's enterprise stuff with ext3, even though it's not the quickest. I use XFS on my desktop because I want the quickest handling of large (multi-gig) files, and am not that worried about individual files. On my laptop I use ext3.

I also use ext3 exclusively on my /boot partition for compatability/rescue reasons which is the reason I keep a seperate /boot and one of the reasons for a seperate /home partition.

 

[Sunner]

I use, in order of preference/availability, XFS, ReiserFS v3, Ext3.
On something mission critical, I suppose maybe I'd avoid Reiser, but if it's truly mission critical, I'd probably want a SPARC/Solaris box anyway