I believe that you're talking about ext3, which is ext2 with journaling
added. AFAIK it is not yet included with Mandrake.
ReiserFS is a completely new filesystem with an underlying structure that
is similar to a database. Unlike most Unix/Linux filesystems, ReiserFS
does not use inodes. I am using it because it is supposedly optimized to
handle large numbers of small files (like a typical mail server). On a
normal Unix filesystem (like ext2) with a lot of small files, you will
often run out of inodes before you run out of space. Of course, you can
reconfigure things to support more inodes, but it's a pain to do so.
I have been using ReiserFS on three systems for over a month. One is a
webserver, one is for development, and one is a mail server (the hardware
is identical). It works flawlessly on all systems, except for the mail
server. The mail server fails mysteriously every 9-10 days. I can't say
for certain that the problem is caused by ReiserFS, since I can't find any
error messages in the system logs. However, it seems to be the most likely
culprit.
The system doesn't crash, but I can't run any new programs (which requires
the use of the filesystem to retrieve them from disk). X still works and
the system will echo chars on the command line. However, since I can't
load a new program (like 'shutdown') I am forced to hit the reset button to
get back to normal. After that, it reboots quickly and with no apparent
loss of data. It's annoying to be forced to reboot every few days (reminds
me of Windows NT) and I'd like to figure out the problem. If I can't find
any clues to the cause, I'm going to try plugging the drive into a
different motherboard (maybe it's a hardware-related problem). I have not
been able to detect any kind of pattern to the failures and the time
between them is so long that it is difficult to troubleshoot.
Jeff
At 03:23 PM 8/18/00 -0400, you wrote:
>IN a nutshell Tony the Reiser FS is basically the ext2 FS with a few
>important modifications.
