On Friday 11 May 2007 15:40, M Harris wrote:

        Detailed Epistle can be found in the openSUSE reference (suse 10.0) in section 34.2.1.

Officially one of the key features of the 2.4 kernel release, ReiserFS has been available as a kernel patch for 2.2.x SUSE kernels since SUSE Linux version 6.4. ReiserFS was designed by Hans Reiser and the Namesys development team. It has proven itself to be a powerful alternative to the old Ext2. Its key assets are better disk space utilization, better disk access performance, and faster crash recovery. In ReiserFS, all data is organized in a structure called B*-balanced tree. The tree structure contributes to better disk space utilization because small files can be stored directly in the B* tree leaf nodes instead of being stored elsewhere and just maintaining a pointer to the actual disk location. In addition to that, storage is not allocated in chunks of 1 or 4 kB, but in portions of the exact size needed. Another benefit lies in the dynamic allocation of inodes. This keeps the file system more flexible than traditional file systems, like Ext2, where the inode density must be specified at file system creation time. For small files, file data and “stat_data” (inode) information are often stored next to each other. They can be read with a single disk I/O operation, meaning that only one access to disk is required to retrieve all the information needed. Using a journal to keep track of recent metadata changes makes a file system check a matter of seconds, even for huge file systems. ReiserFS also supports data journaling and ordered data modes similar to the concepts outlined in the Ext3 section, Section 34.2.3, “Ext3” (page 500). The default mode is data=ordered, which ensures both data and metadata integrity, but uses journaling only for metadata. -- Kind regards, M Harris <>< -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

On Friday 11 May 2007 21:50, George Osvald wrote:

My experience with Reiser is exact opposite. Exf3 has not caused any problems to me ever. Reiser corrupted the file system a couple of times beyond the point of recovery. Also the recovery in Exf3 is much faster. Exf3 simply replays the journal and that's it. Reiser was re-playing records one by one and that usually took much longer (both tested on AMD 64 with 1GB of memory) Your reported experience is irrelevant to the discussion. Reiserfs is technically what it is... no more... no less. It is a superior filesystem to EXTx for several technical reasons which are incompatible with your experience. I would have to question your experience. This is a technical discussion, not a religious testimony.

Having said all of that--- EXTx does work... very well... has for many many years and will continue to for many many more years. But, reiserfs is better... hands down. (or should I say Hans down) The technical achievement of reiserfs is also completely not relevant to whether Hans Reiser allegedly murdered his own wife. From the looks of things the trial is going to be very complicated... her lover is a known (confessed) serial murderer... "he" probably did it. On the other hand we all may be looking at a simple case of murderous rage after jealousy. It doesn't matter to the technical community... all of my systems are running reiserfs and have for several years now... flawlessly, I might add. As a postscript... I remember one problem I had with reiserfs with SuSE Professional 9.0--- the machine went down in a thunder storm and following would not reboot. The index was so honked that fsck would not run automatically. I had to boot into recovery mode and manually run reiserfsck with a rebuild-index. It ran for about 22 seconds, rebuilt the index--- the journal restored the meta data... and whalla, the machine was back on-line in less than five minutes... and most of that time was spent trying to find my recovery CD. :-P -- Kind regards, M Harris <>< -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

On Friday 11 May 2007 23:00, Patrick Shanahan wrote:

No, there are problems with reiserfs.  I also lost data when a reiserfs system crashed and was unrecoverable. I have several questions for you:

1) Were you aware of the rebuild-index option, and did you try it? 2) Do you honestly believe that reiserfs caused the problem, or might you be honest enough to admit that "something else" may have "caused" the problem which left reiserfs with a broken index... which you did not know how to recover? 3) What were the circumstances which led you to "know" that reiserfs was the culprit? 4) If there are problems with reiserfs, why and how are so many systems able to run for years without any difficulty? --- how is this possible? If the file system has problems then every system would display symptoms of those problems... under conditions that are (software remember) repeatable... reproduceable... and most importantly, fixable. Where are the bug reports... ? How come those "bugs" are not affecting my systems? Computer science is not voodoo and superstition folks... nor is it about how anyone religiously feels about their favorite file system (like vi vs emacs discussions). Think about this... if you believe that reiserfs has problems... and everyone knows that the technical reasons for using it in the first place are for the provided advantages... why don't you (suse) fix the problems?? So, Hans is in the slammer... its open source--- fix it! (if its broke, that is). Last point... you lost data not because reiserfs was broke, or because raid stripe didn't work, or because of the phase of the moon or the length of a witches skirt... you lost data because YOU didn't have it backed up. -- Kind regards, M Harris <>< -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

On Friday 11 May 2007 23:27, M Harris wrote:

        If the file system has problems then every system would display symptoms of those problems... under conditions that are (software remember) repeatable... reproduceable... and most importantly, fixable. ... this FAQ from namesys is interesting:

http://www.namesys.com/faq.html -- Kind regards, M Harris <>< -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

On Saturday 12 May 2007, M Harris wrote:

On Friday 11 May 2007 23:27, M Harris wrote:

...

        If the file system has problems then every system would display symptoms of those problems... under conditions that are (software remember) repeatable... reproduceable... and most importantly, fixable.  Where are the bug reports... ?  How come those "bugs" are not affecting my systems?

... and these are some interesting benchmarks for Reiser4

http://www.namesys.com/benchmarks.html

Man. When you go off you REALLY GO OFF! There is no need to be rude. I do not religiously believe in EXF3 over ReiserFS. Frankly I do not care as long as it works. I simply have better experience with EXF3 then ReiserFS. And I have read many articles on the subject and was impressed with the results.....until I had problems. I was using both in my classes (I taught Linux for three years) and EXF3 simply gave me longer mileage. If I could compare that experience with anything then I would probably mention my experience with MAXTOR drives (or superdrives). They were supposed to be superior,best, fastest and all that advertising rubbish. I can tell you that after burning several of them I have replaced my last Maxtor drive a couple of weeks ago and there is no Maxtor for me ever. This can be just my personal experience but it does not change my opinion.

-- Kind regards,

M Harris <><

-- Regards, George Osvald OK Studio ® http://www.okstudio.com.au Email: mail@okstudio.com.au -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

On Saturday 12 May 2007, M Harris wrote:

nd I hope that a good group will take the namesys folks on and help them get the Reiser4 fs into

Of course Namesys = Hans Reiser. I'm personally not aware of any other players, and Hans is not available and rumored to be difficult to work with when he is available. -- _____________________________________ John Andersen -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

On Sunday 13 May 2007, M Harris wrote:

On Sunday 13 May 2007 00:47, John Andersen wrote:

...

Of course Namesys = Hans Reiser. I'm personally not aware of any other players, and Hans is not available and rumored to be difficult to work with when he is available.

Funny you mention this... 'cause I was just doing some on-line research into the case... and found among other things (Hans' trial has been delayed until May 29th due to Du Bois availability) that the Namesys company is being offered for sale to help defray Hans' legal expenses... Du Bois claims they'll take offers from all "vultures". I sent a message to the dev team and got a response from one of the team who says they have no communications from Hans. Du Bois is probably the main contact point for making an offer for Namesys. This looks like a good opportunity for somebody... ever wanted to run a file system company?

I wonder if Novell has given this any thought lately?

If that's true then I don't understand why anyone would pay any money for the company. ReiserFS being open source anone can just take over the project and not pay a dime.

-- Kind regards,

M Harris <><

-- Regards, George Osvald OK Studio ® http://www.okstudio.com.au Email: mail@okstudio.com.au -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

On Monday 14 May 2007, John Andersen wrote:

On Sunday 13 May 2007, George Osvald wrote:

...

...

      Funny you mention this... 'cause I was just doing some on-line research into the case... and found among other things (Hans' trial has been delayed until May 29th due to Du Bois availability) that the Namesys company is being offered for sale to help defray Hans' legal expenses... Du Bois claims they'll take offers from all "vultures".       I sent a message to the dev team and got a response from one of the team who says they have no communications from Hans. Du Bois is probably the main contact point for making an offer for Namesys. This looks like a good opportunity for somebody... ever wanted to run a file system company?

      I wonder if Novell has given this any thought lately?

If that's true then I don't understand why anyone would pay any money for the company. ReiserFS being open source anone can just take over the project and not pay a dime.

That is the prevailing view in the Microsoft world. Unusual to find it expressed here in Linux-Land.

It is not un usual at all. I have seen many forks of many open source projects over the years. Some of them succeeded some disappeared. Point is it has been done many times before. -- Regards, George Osvald OK Studio ® http://www.okstudio.com.au Email: mail@okstudio.com.au -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

On Sunday 13 May 2007 04:14, M Harris wrote:

At any rate (as you might have guessed) I'm really hoping that openSUSE will reconsider on making reiserfs the default... and I hope that a good group will take the namesys folks on and help them get the Reiser4 fs into the mainline kernel soon. The filesystem is good, and its worth saving and promoting... regardless what happens with Hans.

Maybe. But my concern is for something maintainable for the future. Reiser has his problems which have a similar impact to falling under the proverbial bus, and I seem to remember reading something either by him or quoting him, which iirc in essence said that none of the distros people understood reiserfs properly, that suse's changes were wrong, and even his developers don't fully understand it. So now, currently, there is no maintenance available in practical terms - anything which is done, Reiser might insist on reworking, as and when he becomes free. Resiserfs is at a dead end, and with hindsight it could have been seen to be a dead end way back. Nobody other than Suse made it default fs, so it was a minority decision. At least they have left a forward path with ext3, so I feel that no criticism is due. I hope it goes forward, but I can't see it under current circumstances. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

On Sunday 13 May 2007 20:52, John Andersen wrote:

On Sunday 13 May 2007, Vince L wrote:

...

I seem to remember reading something either by him or quoting him, which iirc in essence said that none of the distros people understood reiserfs properly, that suse's changes were wrong, and even his developers don't fully understand it.

Souce please...

Take what I have written at face value, it is sufficiently caveated that I don't feel obliged to spend the odd hour looking for a source and neither should you feel obliged to work hard to refute it.

...

Resiserfs is at a dead end, and with hindsight it could have been seen to be a dead end way back.

Ext2 and 3 are equally candidates for dead-end-ism. The only reason suse re-emphasized ext2/3 is because RedHat does all the maintenance for them.

There are more than a few published benchmarks on this topic such as http://www.debian-administration.org/articles/388/print

But it seems pointless to re-start this discussion, especially in the light of comments like: "with hindsight it could have been seen to be a dead end way back"

Your link concerns the technical merits, whereas I am concerned with maintainability. I am indifferent as to the technical merits, if the future of reiserfs resides solely in Hans Reiser's head [although I do feel somewhat persuaded of the technical merits]. He has metaphorically fallen under a bus for the time being, which should be a big wake up call. I am not bothered about proving very much about Hans Reiser's style one way or the other. But I am very bothered to see some positive argument that reiserfs is well understood in the community and that should the worst happen for him personally, the community is able to maintain it with good consensus. And this is aside from any consideration of the trial he now faces. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

I am very bothered to see some positive argument that reiserfs is well understood in the community and that should the worst happen for him personally, the community is able to maintain it with good consensus. This need not be a convern. So many folks (maybe not you personally) seem to feel that "kernel development" is somehow beyond the scope of mere mortals. Reiserfs may not be well understood in the community... yet... but that needs to change. We just need a good team that believes in the technical merits of

On Sunday 13 May 2007 15:42, Vince L wrote: the fs who are willing to put some time into learning how it works. The only factor is time. By the way... some of you rocket scientists are probably thinking logically regarding this topic and the kernel in general I hope?? I mean Linus Torvalds in only mortal too... if you get my drift. -- Kind regards, M Harris <>< -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

On Monday 14 May 2007 03:27, Vince L wrote:

Yes, he could fall under a proverbial bus. But there, I see a few more high profile names, who could carry it on, probably seamlessly - which I think is an actual success on Torvalds' part. Yes... replicate and deligate... with supervision. If the whole mess does not get passed on to the next generation everything was for naught.

-- Kind regards, M Harris <>< -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 The Sunday 2007-05-13 at 11:52 -0800, John Andersen wrote:

Ext2 and 3 are equally candidates for dead-end-ism. The only reason suse re-emphasized ext2/3 is because RedHat does all the maintenance for them.

Its more complex than that. SuSE people explained in detail at the time why they were no longer pushing reiserfs as default at install time. - -- Cheers, Carlos E. R. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.5 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Made with pgp4pine 1.76 iD8DBQFGR6QRtTMYHG2NR9URAlJVAJ9dVtkkfBriUHAfLpQzNJThlPNO4wCeL3AK Jb0MZ6a5IgV4gZ3Z8MQH8mQ= =wA68 -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

On Sun, 13 May 2007 15:54:13 -0800, John Andersen wrote:

It certainly wasn't done for technical reasons, seems like mostly a cost issue.

It's not true, unless you count maintainability as a cost issue. Plus there will be an update path from ext3 to ext4, something that reiserfs can't offer. And besides there being no path from reiserfs3 to reiserfs4, reiserfs4 with its metadata that can be changed by plugins is a maintenance nightmare. These *are* technical reasons, at least in my books. Philipp -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

On Friday 11 May 2007, M Harris wrote:

hy don't you (suse) fix the problems??      So, Hans is in the slammer... its open source--- fix it!   (if its broke, that is).

Exactly SO! This is one of the clearest demonstrations of the a FAILURE of open source. This free open source package with no critical flaws was dropped (de-standardized is more like it) for quite arbitrary reasons. To be fair, suse "dropped" Reiserfs as its standard the week before Hans got arrested because, they said, there was no user base to handle maintenance of the package. Since Suse was the principal proponent of Reiserfs among distros this was probably true. Every other distro was probably looking to Suse for maintenance on this/ OTOH, nobody has pointed out any serious breakage with the package either. Somebody said it didn't scale well. I have yet to learn just what that means or how much scaling is necessary for your typical workstation, laptop, or even small to medium size servers. I still prefer it. I use Reiserfs on Raid1 and Raid5 as well as regular disks. I have had to rebuild a tree once or twice after power supply failures. Latest news on Hans suggests there may be another player involved in the disappearance of his wife. -- _____________________________________ John Andersen -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

You make valid points and ask good questions, then you go bonkers as if your meds gave way.  I suppose you also debate with an ak47. heh... no... <sorry> No, we is the USA use the M16 to settle our debates... its a little bulkier, maybe not as good in water... but still all in all a nice peace... I mean piece. <sigh> The main response point I failed to make directly, for which I am sorry, is

On Saturday 12 May 2007 07:08, Patrick Shanahan wrote: that reiserfs is stable... very stable. When it fails--- its not reiserfs that fails... its the hardware... always. (almost always) That's why I put the FAQ up there, and that is why I pointed everyone to the buglist, and that is why I pointed y'all to the namesys benchmarks and buglist... because reiserfs failures (at this point) are 99.9999% hardware related period. What is interesting is that an HD will run with failures on EXT3 where the same HD will fail running reiserfs. The tolerances on reiserfs are not as forgiving... but the bottom line is that the EXT3 file system will eventually fail also as the HD continues to degrade. Reiserfs also is prone to failure with certain chipsets... notoriously the VIA chipset particularly in the Pentium II AMDK5 -6 era. Again... not because there is anything wrong with reiserfs, but because the hardware tolerances were off. The answer to my question--- why to hundreds of thousands of machines run just fine without failure on reiserfs?--- its valid. And the answer is simple... because reiserfs is stable as a rock. The main point for the entire discussion is that openSUSE should NOT drop reiserfs --- they should embrace it, continue to sponsor it, and continue to drive Reiser4 towards mainline inclusion in the kernel. Its a good filesystem... and it works well for openSUSE. Plus, that would demonstrate one of the primary advantages of open source software. Ps. Sorry for the snippet about your data backup practices... too much caffeine... however, in my own defense I would offer the suggestion that it might be better to say you lost a drive vs you lost data. I have lost dives many times... but I have never lost data... I know Iknow--semantics. peace -- Kind regards, M Harris <>< -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

* John Andersen [05-12-07 06:18]:

On Friday 11 May 2007, Patrick Shanahan wrote:

...

No, there are problems with reiserfs.  I also lost data when a reiserfs system crashed and was unrecoverable.  Since, I have moved to exf3 and have not lost data.

Reiser crashed? It just up and crashed all by itself? Are you sure your machine didn't crash or you hare drive didn't fail? Are you sure there was no electrical failure, power surge? You are sure it was Reiser?

Or did you fix the underlying problem, and change file systems and not had a data loss since?

Post hoc, ergo propter hoc!

It must be in the water supply, as it is spreading..... -- Patrick Shanahan Plainfield, Indiana, USA HOG # US1244711 http://wahoo.no-ip.org Photo Album: http://wahoo.no-ip.org/gallery2 OpenSUSE Linux http://en.opensuse.org/ Registered Linux User #207535 @ http://counter.li.org -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 The Saturday 2007-05-12 at 00:00 -0400, Patrick Shanahan wrote:

No, there are problems with reiserfs. I also lost data when a reiserfs system crashed and was unrecoverable. Since, I have moved to exf3 and have not lost data. I will stand the extra four or five minutes when I reboot every other month or so for the file system checks.

And I have lost data on an ext3 partition. And on another with XFS. And with reiserfs. So? - -- Cheers, Carlos E. R. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.5 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Made with pgp4pine 1.76 iD8DBQFGRZZYtTMYHG2NR9URAndIAKCCIO5ac95b6qHBsVsILQniF2zLCwCeNk5G YRoDltFJ8eR6BQadotUszjY= =MVNj -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 The Saturday 2007-05-12 at 08:13 -0400, Patrick Shanahan wrote:

...

And I have lost data on an ext3 partition. And on another with XFS. And with reiserfs. So?

I've even had an 8" floppy fail :^)

And I have dozens of tea saucers with a hole in the middle, of the 4700 series :-p Seriosly, what I mean is that all filesystems types can fail. Just because we were bitten doesn't mean that particular type is worse than the other. Reiserfs is very sofisticated and innovative, and it's problems can be comparatively "innovative". I use it in the partitions where I have source code and compilations, for instance. My home is xfs, my root is ext3. I would use reiser for a maildir partition. - -- Cheers, Carlos E. R. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.5 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Made with pgp4pine 1.76 iD8DBQFGRdFDtTMYHG2NR9URAgq3AJoCMEYIXVQXSJI2BxNj9a7SejzYhACfQ2AV YmKuJ7bwr/xPS7pLr4ZfckQ= =o/5X -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

On Sat 12 May 2007 22:18, James Knott wrote:

Also, anyone who's used audio cassettes for data storage can tell you about failures!   ;-)

TRS-80 days . . . & probs with wobbly plugs! ............................. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

On Sun, 2007-05-20 at 20:21 -0700, Carl Spitzer wrote:

On Sat, 2007-05-12 at 22:38 +0000, riccardo35@gmail.com wrote:

...

On Sat 12 May 2007 22:18, James Knott wrote: Also, anyone who's used audio cassettes for data storage can tell you about failures! ;-)

TRS-80 days . . . & probs with wobbly plugs!

TRS 80-4p yeah those where sturdy little machines attached KB, no HD unless you wanted to buy one the size of a turntable which cost $500. I still have a disk notch-er for making use of dual sided single density 5.25 floppies. I donated it many years ago and its probably in a museum. Came standard with green or black screen and two floppy drives. I can not remember trashing any disks except when someone set a drink on one.

Nice to meet another old timer.

Ah... nostalgia. Atari 800 & 1200, no HD and TV as monitor. Also Commodore Amiga (A500). Still have all three but haven't fired them up in a while. -- Ken Schneider UNIX since 1989, linux since 1994, SuSE since 1998 -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

Kevin Thorpe wrote:

...

...

Came standard with green or black screen and two floppy drives. I can not remember trashing any disks except when someone set a drink on one.

8 inch floppies were the business.

I had on CP/M machine. Had to umount them to don't lose data (and no other drive :-) this made me very cautious when beginning the use of Linux :-)) I remember I got 64Kb 5" floppies, I couldn't understand they could fill so much data is so tiny drive :-)) jdd -- http://www.dodin.net http://gourmandises.orangeblog.fr/ -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

Epilogue: I had the opportunity to compare installations on the same partition configuration and encryption on the same PC. If I look at ONLY the amount of time from Hard boot to full desktop functional availability; Reiser was by far the quickest to complete the process and faster under these conditions by 2 seconds than ex2 or ex3. As there are so so many number of variables I can think of - please do not take this as an arbitrary statement. If I have a power outage and the "server" in question is very busy writing I will let you all know how successful -replaying the journals and correcting any file damage is. Without the benefit of fault tolerance documentation on different file systems, this is a very poor guide as to the stability of a file system which requires repair. Ultimately, until definite questions can be answered with respect to fault tolerance/performance it will probably be left to individual preference or reliance on installation defaults - currently ex3 I believe. As so many people have contributed as to the man responsible for Reiser; future development will probably default to ex? by suse. If we ever get closer to a file system that is pure TTS based, I suppose Reiser may be the closest, however future development unlikely. Thanks to all for the information and healthy discussion. I never take for granted those who take the time to add-respond to some of my zany questions and my thanks is heart felt. Scott 8-)