On 9/25/05, Daniel Garcia <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Hello, > > I would like to know wich is the best filesystem to > use: the ReiseFS or XFS. Is it possible to do a whole > installation of the Debian system (testing) with XFS. > I will use the netinst ISO. > > Thank you > Daniel
It really depends on what you want to do: ReiserFS is faster than ext3 ONLY for files under 4kB. In such a case, you can expect to experience faster speeds than ext3 by a factor of 10 to 15. "This is of great benefit in Usenet news spools, HTTP caches, mail delivery systems and other applications where small file performance is critical." If you use ReiserFS, use a kernel that is newer than 2.6.2, since the ReiserFS on older kernels had problems. ReiserFS, also known as Reiser3, is no longer in development, other than security updates and critical bug fixes. This is because ReiserFS will be superseded by Reiser4. Currently Reiser4 has not been merged into the mainstream Linux kernel, although this is the developer's (Namesys) first priority. XFS (developed by SGI) is also good, since it allows you to do online-resizing; but ReiserFS allows you to do this as well, and so does ext3 (all three only allow you to grow your partitions, not shrink them). Also XFS allows you to do online-defragmentation. However, XFS is known to suffer from "out-of-order write hazards". If you're going to use ext2, you may as well use ext3 (developed by Stephen Tweedie), which is essentially ext2 with a journal. This makes it more reliable than ext2, but at a slight cost of speed. This small cost in speed is worth it, in my opinion. It is very hard to recover deleted files on ext3; but this can be a good thing or bad thing, depending on its purpose. Unlike XFS, fragmentation isn't considered an issue on ext3, so you won't need to defragment ext3. To summarize, if you are going to run a system that will deal with small files, less than 4kB in size, then use ReiserFS. Otherwise, I would use the ext3 filesystem. XFS is good, but I'm not sure what it offers that ReiserFS or ext3 doesn't offer. I personally use ext3, and the performance and reliability is great. I use ext3 because many files of mine are larger than 4kB, in which case ReiserFS would not be the better choice. Furthermore, the convenience of not requiring defragmentation is a major advantage of ext3. I hope this helps. All the information in this email was acquired from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_filesystems and the associated links. The quoted material is also from this webpage or from pages linked to it. Please refer to the page if in need of more informative material. Malcolm [EMAIL PROTECTED] --------------------------------
