[TriLUG] ReiserFS vs ext3 or any other FS

[Daniel T. Chen]

ext3 converts a LOT easier. Basically you need an ext3-aware kernel and
e2fsprogs >= 1.22 (1.23 was released Aug 15th), then you run `tune2fs -j
/dev/X' (where X is the partition), reboot, voila, journaling
filesystem. No need to umount your partitions, either, before you run
tune2fs.

ReiserFS tends to be a bit faster in my experience. I have a machine that
runs ext3 (1 GHz Athlon T-bird w/ ATA/66 HD) and a machine that runs
ReiserFS (266 MHz PII w/ PIO-4 HD), and the latter just "feels" more
responsive. Ymmv. If you use ReiserFS with a 2.2 kernel, you'll default to
using the 3.5.x-series ReiserFS format; if you use ReiserFS with a 2.4
kernel, you'll default to using the 3.6.x format. 3.5.x is readable on any
kernel; 3.6.x is readable only on 2.4 kernels. At last dig through the
mailing list archive, I could find no mention of requiring a format
upgrade with every major kernel revision.

My experience has been that both ext3 and ReiserFS are good journaling
filesystems, but there are others like IBM's JFS, SGI's XFS, and I'm sure
I'm omitting others. A quick search on google reflects a bunch of hits for
comparisons (some false hits); your best bet is to look in the Slashdot
and ReiserFS archives. The technicalities are probed a bit more in-depth
here: http://www.linuxgazette.com/issue55/florido.html

Of course you *could* find a spare HD and create two partitions, one
ReiserFS 3.6.x and another ext3 (use at least 2.4.8-ac4), and run Bonnie
or Bonnie++ on each.

---
Dan Chen                 crimsun at email.unc.edu
GPG key: www.cs.unc.edu/~chenda/pubkey.gpg.asc

On Fri, 17 Aug 2001, Steven Lee wrote:

> I would like to implement something like this the next time I install. Is there much difference between the two? If you have a link to any articles comparing any of these new filesystems to each other Id appreciate it. I saw where ReiserFS will require an upgrade everytime I do an upgrade on the kernel which makes me a bit nervous. Does the same hold true for ext3?