[opensuse] ext4 vs btrfs
Hi all, I was wondering when should one choose ext4 and when btrfs... Ofcourse i've googling for it, but in some comparisons they only measure throughput in general. I agree that _is_ important, but i presume other factors also play a role... When dealing with config files (in "/etc/.." or so) it is probably very handy to be able to do a roll-back. But when dealing with a large collection of ISO's ? Or when doing a local mirror? In that case one isn't interested in the possibility of a roll-back. But more in general overhead caused by intermediate inodes and so-on. And i presume that having mbox on btrfs isn't a good idea either. Any bright idea's when to use what FS? Hans -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On 2012-07-13 00:29, Hans Witvliet wrote:
Any bright idea's when to use what FS?
I don't know, but I'm not going to try. I have seen some people with royal filesystem crashes and I'm staying clear of btrfs for some years. - -- Cheers / Saludos, Carlos E. R. (from 11.4 x86_64 "Celadon" at Telcontar) -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.16 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/ iEYEARECAAYFAk//UowACgkQIvFNjefEBxr3uwCggyE/1nrOZaV6NN9igomAUgnd lMcAoKOafYTTUgVibj0GRT2aeiO5n7Zi =x9Bw -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org
El 12/07/12 18:29, Hans Witvliet escribió:
Hi all,
I was wondering when should one choose ext4 and when btrfs...
Ofcourse i've googling for it, but in some comparisons they only measure throughput in general. I agree that _is_ important, but i presume other factors also play a role... When dealing with config files (in "/etc/.." or so) it is probably very handy to be able to do a roll-back.
But when dealing with a large collection of ISO's ?
Last time I checked, XFS worked better for larger files, things might have changed in the meanwhile though. I use BTRFS daily and while it usually works, the error handling is still sketchy to say the least and will BUG or panic in such cases.. but to be fair, it has improved significantly in recent kernels. Filesystem corruption is also a possibility, personally I got hit once in the last months and took me a while to figure out I needed to zero the filesystem log to keep going. fsck will not help you in that case. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org
On 07/12/2012 06:43 PM, Cristian Rodríguez wrote:
El 12/07/12 18:29, Hans Witvliet escribió:
Hi all,
I was wondering when should one choose ext4 and when btrfs...
Ofcourse i've googling for it, but in some comparisons they only measure throughput in general. I agree that _is_ important, but i presume other factors also play a role... When dealing with config files (in "/etc/.." or so) it is probably very handy to be able to do a roll-back.
But when dealing with a large collection of ISO's ? Last time I checked, XFS worked better for larger files, things might have changed in the meanwhile though.
I use BTRFS daily and while it usually works, the error handling is still sketchy to say the least and will BUG or panic in such cases.. but to be fair, it has improved significantly in recent kernels.
Filesystem corruption is also a possibility, personally I got hit once in the last months and took me a while to figure out I needed to zero the filesystem log to keep going. fsck will not help you in that case.
Well, I know it's a little passe, but I've been using reiserfs for about 4 years and love it. The recovery is great ! And I've never had it totally go belly up on me ! My 2 cents, Duaine -- Duaine Hechler Piano, Player Piano, Pump Organ Tuning, Servicing& Rebuilding Reed Organ Society Member Florissant, MO 63034 (314) 838-5587 dahechler@att.net www.hechlerpianoandorgan.com -- Home& Business user of Linux - 11 years -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org
Duaine Hechler said the following on 07/12/2012 09:07 PM:
On 07/12/2012 06:43 PM, Cristian Rodríguez wrote:
El 12/07/12 18:29, Hans Witvliet escribió:
Hi all,
I was wondering when should one choose ext4 and when btrfs...
Ofcourse i've googling for it, but in some comparisons they only measure throughput in general. I agree that _is_ important, but i presume other factors also play a role... When dealing with config files (in "/etc/.." or so) it is probably very handy to be able to do a roll-back.
But when dealing with a large collection of ISO's ? Last time I checked, XFS worked better for larger files, things might have changed in the meanwhile though.
I use BTRFS daily and while it usually works, the error handling is still sketchy to say the least and will BUG or panic in such cases.. but to be fair, it has improved significantly in recent kernels.
Filesystem corruption is also a possibility, personally I got hit once in the last months and took me a while to figure out I needed to zero the filesystem log to keep going. fsck will not help you in that case.
Well, I know it's a little passe, but I've been using reiserfs for about 4 years and love it. The recovery is great ! And I've never had it totally go belly up on me !
+1 I tried BtrFS and went back to ReiserFS 'cos it ... somewhere in the spectrum between scared me and bothered me. To work properly you need to pour just about everything into the one BtrFS, as far as I can see, so it can do its magic. You then treat it logically as many sort-of-partitioned-file-systems using the subvolume mechanism. But using ReiserFS on top of LVM I'm getting some of the things that BtrFS can do. Certainly many of the ones I'm interested in like btree indexing and snapshots. And I'm much happier having separate partitions, eve if they are only LVM, for each FS. Isn't there something about how long a FSCK takes depending on something like the square or other Nth power of the size of the FS, having to check all nodes ... Like others I'm holding off. There are still to many imponderables about BtrFS. I mean, how many of us *need* a blindly fast FS or a bleeding edge one other than to boost our Geek-cred? Heck, ext4 on a SSD ... can you do striping across SSDs? I've got better things to do than find that out for myself. -- Originality is the art of remembering the quote but forgetting the source. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On 2012-07-13 03:07, Duaine Hechler wrote:
Well, I know it's a little passe, but I've been using reiserfs for about 4 years and love it. The recovery is great ! And I've never had it totally go belly up on me !
+1 But I had it gone belly up on me. And ext3, and xfs... all of them. It is shame reiserfs is doomed, though. - -- Cheers / Saludos, Carlos E. R. (from 11.4 x86_64 "Celadon" at Telcontar) -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.16 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/ iEYEARECAAYFAk//e64ACgkQIvFNjefEBxrY6wCgnZODvcRX9l+gaI9SsZHgg3YE wBEAnREXpF9mxTHa4UpCds95VHKwK6WK =m/qM -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org
On Fri, 2012-07-13 at 03:36 +0200, Carlos E. R. wrote:
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On 2012-07-13 03:07, Duaine Hechler wrote:
Well, I know it's a little passe, but I've been using reiserfs for about 4 years and love it. The recovery is great ! And I've never had it totally go belly up on me !
+1
But I had it gone belly up on me. And ext3, and xfs... all of them. It is shame reiserfs is doomed, though.
Ok, last couple of years i found out that i didn't make backup's in vain. Both reiser, ext2, ext3, ext4 and xfs got beyond repairing (or would take too much time to do it). So i'll guess btrfs will be no exception to the rule. However, i've heard quite some impressive talks from SuSE representative to dismiss btrfs as too dangerous. If it is still "experimental" those guys wouldn't dare to include it into sles11sp2.... So as reiser gets end-of-life (no not hans reiser ;-) one starts to loke around. Specially when doing a re-installation. I mean, some vague talks** at FOSDEM or so is one thing, but guys from Nurnberg talking to customers with support contracts is quite something else, not? So the original question was not _if_ one should choose btrfs, but in which case which filesystem should be used, knowing that each has its own flaws... ** i lost track of how many time i heard that AFS was almost finished.. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org
El vie 13 jul 2012 18:44:42 CLT, Hans Witvliet escribió:
On Fri, 2012-07-13 at 03:36 +0200, Carlos E. R. wrote:
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On 2012-07-13 03:07, Duaine Hechler wrote:
Well, I know it's a little passe, but I've been using reiserfs for about 4 years and love it. The recovery is great ! And I've never had it totally go belly up on me !
+1
But I had it gone belly up on me. And ext3, and xfs... all of them. It is shame reiserfs is doomed, though.
Ok,
last couple of years i found out that i didn't make backup's in vain. Both reiser, ext2, ext3, ext4 and xfs got beyond repairing (or would take too much time to do it).
Yeah, neither filesystems or RAID are replacement of backups. Regular PC hardware SUCKS, big time, top to bottom, from BIOSes to harddisk firmware. I cannot overemphasize this, not having backups is crazy.
So i'll guess btrfs will be no exception to the rule.
However, i've heard quite some impressive talks from SuSE representative to dismiss btrfs as too dangerous. If it is still "experimental" those guys wouldn't dare to include it into sles11sp2....
No, it is not "too dangerous" but "experimental" .
So as reiser gets end-of-life (no not hans reiser ;-) one starts to loke around. Specially when doing a re-installation.
reiserfs development was stalled and dying long before the tragic events ocurred.
I mean, some vague talks** at FOSDEM or so is one thing, but guys from Nurnberg talking to customers with support contracts is quite something else, not?
Well..money can buy you quick patches and support in cases thing go kaput...
So the original question was not _if_ one should choose btrfs, but in which case which filesystem should be used, knowing that each has its own flaws...
** i lost track of how many time i heard that AFS was almost finished..
No such thing as finished software.. finalized software is dead, ready to become part of museums and source of major pain. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org
On 07/12/2012 08:36 PM, Carlos E. R. wrote:
+1
But I had it gone belly up on me. And ext3, and xfs... all of them. It is shame reiserfs is doomed, though.
+1, I still have 10.3 installs on Reiser that have worked for "God knows how long now" without a single hiccup. (backoffice file & fax servers) I still have 11.0 installs on ext2/ext3 that work fine without a single hiccup. I have mixed ext3 and ext4 installs on 11.4 & Arch Linux that have worked fine without a hiccup. I haven't experimented beyond that. I don't know how old my oldest install has been running, but it has been a while. In that time, I've never found any limitation that I've been faced with from any of the filesystems. So util there are tested reviews that show there is some real benefit that a filesystem change will provide, I don't see any need to be a beta-tester where data is concerned -- nor do I see any reason suse should decide to experiment with a default filesystem change in the near future... -- David C. Rankin, J.D.,P.E. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org
Hello, On Thu, 12 Jul 2012, Duaine Hechler wrote:
On 07/12/2012 06:43 PM, Cristian Rodríguez wrote:
El 12/07/12 18:29, Hans Witvliet escribió:
I was wondering when should one choose ext4 and when btrfs...
If in doubt ... [see below]
Ofcourse i've googling for it, but in some comparisons they only measure throughput in general. I agree that _is_ important, but i presume other factors also play a role... When dealing with config files (in "/etc/.." or so) it is probably very handy to be able to do a roll-back.
But when dealing with a large collection of ISO's ?
ext3. I currently have ~1586. Is that a "large collection"?
Last time I checked, XFS worked better for larger files, things might have changed in the meanwhile though.
XFS is still a beast you have to understand. It does and has been working for years, but you should know what you're doing, and _why_! And you have to set options that fit your use case!
I use BTRFS daily and while it usually works, the error handling is still sketchy to say the least and will BUG or panic in such cases.. but to be fair, it has improved significantly in recent kernels.
btrfs is still a fledgling with little / flaky error handling / recovery. Just read the btrfs ML(-Archive). I probably will use it "soon", but not before a stable fsck for it is available. I'd give it a couple of years.
Filesystem corruption is also a possibility, personally I got hit once in the last months and took me a while to figure out I needed to zero the filesystem log to keep going. fsck will not help you in that case.
Exactly.
Well, I know it's a little passe, but I've been using reiserfs for about 4 years and love it. The recovery is great ! And I've never had it totally go belly up on me !
reiserfs is a dead fish driftin' in the water, a fish that has begun smelling bad years ago. I've almost always[1] called it "reißwolffs" (german for: (paper-|file-) "shredderfs"). And for a reason. I _do_ know, that a lot of people have never had any problems with it, but _how_ it behaved when problems _did_ occur simply and outright disqualified it for me. Classic example: put an image of a reiserfs on reiserfs and do a reiserfsck [--rebuildtree] (not sure about the --rebuildtree, but AFAIR usually that was the only useful thing you could do anyway). The result will be interesting.cn. I for one wait for ext4 to stabilize more, watch btrfs quite interested, but until further notice, I'll stick with ext3. On 16[2] filesystems on this box alone, with ~16TiB (partitioned and formatted!); and another 11.7TiB or so on 13 partitions on the other box, also all ext3. I've been using ext2 "forever" (since 2.0.35 at least), sadly I don't remember since when I use ext3, about 4-6 years? More? Anyway, I've never had _any_ problems I could attribute to the FS[3] and use ext3 exclusively by now (root partitions I hope without ext2 incompatible options, I do have "ext3,ext2" in the FS field in fstab for / (and /boot)) ... Anyway, to sum it up: ... if you have to ask what FS you should use, then use ext3. If you have special needs, ask again, ext4, XFS, JFS, zfs, or btrfs might be more suited to those needs. Read up on the differences. Unless you know _why_ another FS may be more suited _for you_, don't even ask, just use ext3. If you do, do ask again. As long as I see a steady stream of "BUG" mails in the btrfs ML concerning non-ephemereal situations and with no (stable) btrfsck yet... JFTR & my 2¢, -dnh, non-random sig this time ;) [0] could even have been a patched 2.2.14+, but I doubt that. [1] I eagerly jumped for it in 2.4.0-test*[0] when it was brand spanking new, fresh in the kernel, tested and used while it became "stable", lost data, went back to ext2 and _very_ closely followed narrations of others about it, that did or did not have problems with it. Never ever considered going back. Oh, and I looked at the codebase too ... If you still like reißwolffs, I urge you to do the same. Have an interesting.cn read ... About reiserfs4? Deadborn?? [2] # df -t ext3 | wc -l 17 [3] oh, and I did have HW-caused[4] _bad_ crashes, crashes where not even the reset-button worked! (IIRC at least once the power-button didn't too, not sure though!). IIRC, I've never had any FS corruption (that wasn't fixed by fsck/journal-replay on reboot). The one or two times I had something in lost+found were when the HDD corrupted the relevant sectors. Anyway, error- recovery on ext2/3 is much better than on any other FS plus there's tools for the worst case (debugfs, e2undel(?), ext3grep, etc.) [4] some HW would only work with some specific IO-Ports. Else: Hard crash. Took me a while. -- The steady state of disks is full. -- Ken Thompson -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org
Well, I know it's a little passe, but I've been using reiserfs for about 4 years and love it. The recovery is great ! And I've never had it totally go belly up on me !
Same here. Reiser all the way. ext4 performance may be finally getting close to reiser but btrfs is just too new still. And I'm not just talking about a few personal machines or a few servers or a few terabytes or a few users, and more than 4 years. Hundreds of interactive concurrent random-access database users all day every day, about a terabyte of data per server, some with 5 or 10 terabytes and multiple servers in vm's all on one big reiserfs, big backup servers that collect a copy of all the other servers. Some servers running for several years without a reboot. (I even kept one running and hooked to the net even while I transferred it across the data center room to another rack. Triple power supplies means you can unplug one power cord at a time to transfer to a long extension cord from the other rack, then transfer from the extension cord to the pdu in the rack when you get there, without ever losing power along the way ;) Others running for several years without any fs corruption or reinstalls. A few have crashed due to hardware, software, and dos attacks. A few had hardware/ram/heat problems where they would crash as often as once a day for a while until it got fixed. So far I was always good after the reboot and fsck. I have lost fs's due to raid failures. About equally often on hardware vs software raid. With software raid I was more likely to be able to recover the array although it was harder and required me to figure things out that aren't documented too well. If you need snapshots I guess you just have to take your chances. I wish zfs were stable personally. --------------- Welcome to SUSE LINUX 10.0 (i586) - Kernel 2.6.13-15.18-bigsmp (13). foo:~ # uptime 1:59pm up 1421 days 13:14, 43 users, load average: 0.42, 0.52, 0.53 foo:~ # mount /dev/sda2 on / type reiserfs (rw,noatime,acl,user_xattr) --------------- That box was installed March 2006 so it's been in use for 6.4 years and 3.9 years on the current boot. (The data and everything is all on /) Reiserfs has only been debugged since several years ago, no new features = no new bugs. 2 things though: Reiser3 (reiser4 was never finished) outperformed everything that was stable enough to trust, for a long time, but I can't say if if ext4 might possibly have caught up or passed it by now. I can't say if ssd's change the equation. ext4 may have ssd optimizations that matter, or maybe reiser still wins even on ssd's or maybe wins if manually configured just the right way etc. -- bkw -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org
On 7/18/2012 11:40 AM, Brian K. White wrote:
Triple power supplies means you can unplug one power cord at a time to transfer to a long extension cord from the other rack, then transfer from the extension cord to the pdu in the rack when you get there, without ever losing power along the way
Do you have any clue how dangerous that is? -- _____________________________________ ---This space for rent--- -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org
On 7/18/2012 4:31 PM, John Andersen wrote:
On 7/18/2012 11:40 AM, Brian K. White wrote:
Triple power supplies means you can unplug one power cord at a time to transfer to a long extension cord from the other rack, then transfer from the extension cord to the pdu in the rack when you get there, without ever losing power along the way
Do you have any clue how dangerous that is?
Let me see, ham license when I was 11 (which means '81, which means no cb-like licenses that didn't require electronics, radio theory, and code that they have now), EE in college, ... yes. None at all. The 2 or 3 (depending on how you want to count) possible things I'm guessing you're thinking of aren't an issue. Redundant ps's are meant to be both disconnected and reconnected, while live and under load, at any unknown time, from the same circuit or different circuits (ie possibly out of phase, possibly different hz, possibly square vs sine, util vs gen vs ups, reconnected too fast before caps drained, etc), either from the power cord or by ejecting the entire ps. That is not merely something like abuse that good ones can tolerate, but the explicit designed purpose of them all in the first place, even cheap-o's. A robust engineer doesn't invite problems unnecessarily of course no matter how much everything is supposed to be ok, which is why of course I didn't say I do that every day either. At the same time, another part of being robust is you are actually supposed to exercise things and procedures once in a while to ensure they work and are available to you when you may need some time. Things that should work, but are normally ill advised for some reason, should be done on purpose once in a while or else you never can rely on the procedure working on that bad day when you really need it. -- bkw -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org
On Wed, Jul 18, 2012 at 2:40 PM, Brian K. White
I can't say if ssd's change the equation. ext4 may have ssd optimizations that matter, or maybe reiser still wins even on ssd's or maybe wins if manually configured just the right way etc.
If Reiser 3 supports fallocate, you can use the wiper script that is part of hdparm to discard/trim the filesystem via cron. Otherwise, you probably want a filesystem that supports fallocate at a minimum if you want to hit SSDs hard. If anyone knows one way or the other it would be nice to document it here: http://en.opensuse.org/SDB:SSD_discard_%28trim%29_support Greg -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org
On 07/18/2012 01:40 PM, Brian K. White wrote:
Well, I know it's a little passe, but I've been using reiserfs for about 4 years and love it. The recovery is great ! And I've never had it totally go belly up on me !
Same here. Reiser all the way. <snip>
Furthermore, Reiser gave me the BEST fs space usage meaning with the file mix that I have, I tried ext2 and ext3 and ran out of space before I could get all the files rsync'ed to a new drive of the same size. Plus, somehow, I would always loose something with ext3 and NOTHING with reiser for 5+ years. And I'm not sure I want to even try ext4 for the possibility of waiting my time. Duaine -- Duaine Hechler Piano, Player Piano, Pump Organ Tuning, Servicing& Rebuilding Reed Organ Society Member Florissant, MO 63034 (314) 838-5587 dahechler@att.net www.hechlerpianoandorgan.com -- Home& Business user of Linux - 11 years -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org
* Hans Witvliet
Hi all,
I was wondering when should one choose ext4 and when btrfs...
Ofcourse i've googling for it, but in some comparisons they only measure throughput in general. I agree that _is_ important, but i presume other factors also play a role... When dealing with config files (in "/etc/.." or so) it is probably very handy to be able to do a roll-back.
But when dealing with a large collection of ISO's ? Or when doing a local mirror? In that case one isn't interested in the possibility of a roll-back. But more in general overhead caused by intermediate inodes and so-on.
And i presume that having mbox on btrfs isn't a good idea either.
Any bright idea's when to use what FS?
Hans
personally, I use ext3 or ext4 depending on a few factors mostly internal polictys. I personally think btrfs is to new, and XFS is making MUCH better progress. and its tool and support chain are much farther along. my 2 cents..... -Nex6
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participants (11)
-
Anton Aylward -
Brian K. White -
Carlos E. R. -
Cristian Rodríguez -
David C. Rankin -
David Haller -
Duaine Hechler -
Greg Freemyer -
Hans Witvliet -
John Andersen -
nex6