ReiserFS in Anaconda?

[Ro]

Is there or will it be support for ReiserFS in Disk Druid and the Kickstart
installation process? Is there documentation out there about this? I know I
can create ResiserFS partitions after the install is done.



Cheers,



Ro

[Jesse Keating]

Post by Ro
Is there or will it be support for ReiserFS in Disk Druid and the
Kickstart installation process? Is there documentation out there
about this? I know I can create ResiserFS partitions after the
install is done.

Start the install with: "linux reiserfs" to be able to make reiserfs
file systems from disk druid. "jfs" is supported as well.

[Hugo Cisneiros]

Post by Ro
Is there or will it be support for ReiserFS in Disk Druid and the
Kickstart installation process? Is there documentation out there about
this? I know I can create ResiserFS partitions after the install is done.
Cheers,
Ro

In the boot prompt from the install, you can use "linux reiserfs"
(graphic) or "text reiserfs" to add support for reiserfs in the instalation.

But I always asked... Why not put by default? Lots of people are using
it instead of ext3.

[]'s
Hugo

[Jesse Keating]

Post by Hugo Cisneiros
But I always asked... Why not put by default? Lots of people are using
it instead of ext3.

Because it's not as heavily tested as ext3 by the RH folks. They don't
have confidence in it enough to allow it to be a default installer option.
I agree on this as well.

- --
Jesse Keating RHCE MCSE (geek.j2solutions.net)
Fedora Legacy Team (www.fedora.us/wiki/FedoraLegacy)
Mondo DevTeam (www.mondorescue.org)
GPG Public Key (geek.j2solutions.net/jkeating.j2solutions.pub)

Was I helpful? Let others know:
http://svcs.affero.net/rm.php?r=jkeating

[Ro]

Could it "also" be because ReiserFS is heavily supported by SuSE, RH's main
competitor? Or am I out of line on that statement? Don't get me wrong I'm an
RH (Now Fedora) guy but I've wondered about this matter. I went through the
RHCE course and in it they mentioned the ReiserFS as being in development.
Well, we all know that ReiserFS is FAR from being in development... it's
BEEN out... So I was wondering if someone could objectively answer this
questions. I am really not trying to make anyone uncomfortable, just
curious. :-)

RO

-----Original Message-----
From: fedora-devel-list-***@redhat.com
[mailto:fedora-devel-list-***@redhat.com] On Behalf Of Jesse Keating
Sent: Friday, November 07, 2003 10:17 PM
To: fedora-devel-***@redhat.com
Subject: Re: ReiserFS in Anaconda?

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Post by Hugo Cisneiros
But I always asked... Why not put by default? Lots of people are using
it instead of ext3.

Because it's not as heavily tested as ext3 by the RH folks. They don't
have confidence in it enough to allow it to be a default installer option.
I agree on this as well.

- --
Jesse Keating RHCE MCSE (geek.j2solutions.net)
Fedora Legacy Team (www.fedora.us/wiki/FedoraLegacy)
Mondo DevTeam (www.mondorescue.org)
GPG Public Key (geek.j2solutions.net/jkeating.j2solutions.pub)

Was I helpful? Let others know:
http://svcs.affero.net/rm.php?r=jkeating

[Mike Chambers]

Post by Ro
Could it "also" be because ReiserFS is heavily supported by SuSE, RH's main
competitor? Or am I out of line on that statement?

SuSe and whoever else also support sendmail, postfix, http, etc.. but
Red Hat still includes them. Point being? :)

Post by Ro
Don't get me wrong I'm an
RH (Now Fedora) guy but I've wondered about this matter. I went through the
RHCE course and in it they mentioned the ReiserFS as being in development.
Well, we all know that ReiserFS is FAR from being in development... it's
BEEN out... So I was wondering if someone could objectively answer this
questions. I am really not trying to make anyone uncomfortable, just
curious. :-)

It may be out, but doesn't mean it's not stable or stable enough. I
believe Red Hat would include anything that helps make their distro(s) a
better product, but only as long as it goes through Q/A and passes. And
if something major as a database or file system has problems, no reason
to include it if your going to have to spend money just to keep trying
to fix the problem it creates and not be able to spend money on
developing new things or helping improve old things.

I'm sure there are better explanations out there, then again maybe I am
way off topic on reasoning, so someone can chime in if I'm off base
and/or wrong.

[Jesse Keating]

Post by Ro
Well, we all know that ReiserFS is FAR from being in development... it's
BEEN out... So I was wondering if someone could objectively answer this
questions. I am really not trying to make anyone uncomfortable, just
curious. :-)

Actually we don't know that. A lot of work is being done on Reiser4, and
little on 3, and the author has stated that he's more concerned with
feature sets than stability. Not exactly what I want to hear from my fs
developer. Our company gave reiserfs a try a year or 2 back, given it's
merits then, and everybody was saying it was stable, blah blah. It led to
a lot of our customers losing their data when reiser would puke. We're
re-evaulating our file system offerings, and at this point, JFS seems to
be in the lead.

- --
Jesse Keating RHCE MCSE (geek.j2solutions.net)
Fedora Legacy Team (www.fedora.us/wiki/FedoraLegacy)
Mondo DevTeam (www.mondorescue.org)
GPG Public Key (geek.j2solutions.net/jkeating.j2solutions.pub)

Was I helpful? Let others know:
http://svcs.affero.net/rm.php?r=jkeating

[Hugo Cisneiros]

Post by Jesse Keating
Actually we don't know that. A lot of work is being done on Reiser4, and
little on 3, and the author has stated that he's more concerned with
feature sets than stability. Not exactly what I want to hear from my fs
developer. Our company gave reiserfs a try a year or 2 back, given it's
merits then, and everybody was saying it was stable, blah blah. It led to
a lot of our customers losing their data when reiser would puke. We're
re-evaulating our file system offerings, and at this point, JFS seems to
be in the lead.

Now I know why. I just didn't know because ther were always rumours here
that the reiserfs is not stable enough, etc. But in practise, I use
reiserfs a lot on many systems and it never had problems... So I assumed
that the unstable thing was only rumours (because you know, ext3 is the
"standard", so everyone uses it.) Now I see some real troube with
ReiserFS for the first time.

By the way, I think we should test and test it again, to see if can
include to choose in the installation without telling the lilo prompt
the argument "reiserfs". It'll be no "default" file system, but another
file system for users to test.

[]'s
Hugo

[Milan Kerslager]

Post by Ro
Could it "also" be because ReiserFS is heavily supported by SuSE, RH's main
competitor? Or am I out of line on that statement? Don't get me wrong I'm an

No.

ReiserFS always chage its binary representation on disk. ReiserFS always
miss rock-stable quota, fsck and conversion tools. So supporting
ReiserFS could be a pain for RH. Thus - no ReiserFS by default.

Post by Ro
RH (Now Fedora) guy but I've wondered about this matter. I went through the
RHCE course and in it they mentioned the ReiserFS as being in development.
Well, we all know that ReiserFS is FAR from being in development... it's
BEEN out...

Be out and be stable is two different things. When author says "it's
stable" it is not the same like 1.000.000 peoples (testers) says "it's
stable".

I underestand what Hans Reiser wish but I need more than his wishes.

Post by Ro
So I was wondering if someone could objectively answer this
questions. I am really not trying to make anyone uncomfortable, just
curious. :-)

[Michael K. Johnson]

Post by Ro
Could it "also" be because ReiserFS is heavily supported by SuSE, RH's main
competitor? Or am I out of line on that statement? Don't get me wrong I'm an
RH (Now Fedora) guy but I've wondered about this matter. I went through the
RHCE course and in it they mentioned the ReiserFS as being in development.
Well, we all know that ReiserFS is FAR from being in development... it's
BEEN out... So I was wondering if someone could objectively answer this
questions. I am really not trying to make anyone uncomfortable, just
curious. :-)

There is plenty of technology in the kernel developed by our competitors
as well as technology developed by us; that's simply not a factor.

1) We do have strong in-house expertise in ext3, and it is a good
general-purpose filesystem, so it's a good default.
2) We disagree with Hans about the importance of data portability --
we think that you should be able to have both forward and backward
data portability. When Hans changes filesystem format, there has
historically eventually been a tool to migrate you forward, but
if you don't like it you are stuck.

NEITHER OF THESE is intended to bash Hans. He just has different
priorities and makes different tradeoffs than we believe are appropriate
for our technology.

michaelkjohnson

"He that composes himself is wiser than he that composes a book."
Linux Application Development -- Ben Franklin
http://people.redhat.com/johnsonm/lad/

[Xose Vazquez Perez]

Post by Jesse Keating

Post by Hugo Cisneiros
But I always asked... Why not put by default? Lots of people are using
it instead of ext3.

Because it's not as heavily tested as ext3 by the RH folks. They don't
have confidence in it enough to allow it to be a default installer option.
I agree on this as well.

me too.

*ext3* is the _only_ native fs supported by RH. Neither jfs nor reiserfs are
supported, though RH kernel brings them.

Why does people want XFS? Any _special_ feature?

[Bill Anderson]

Post by Xose Vazquez Perez

Post by Jesse Keating

Post by Hugo Cisneiros
But I always asked... Why not put by default? Lots of people are using
it instead of ext3.

Because it's not as heavily tested as ext3 by the RH folks. They don't
have confidence in it enough to allow it to be a default installer option.
I agree on this as well.

me too.
*ext3* is the _only_ native fs supported by RH. Neither jfs nor reiserfs are
supported, though RH kernel brings them.

I coulda swore ext2 was in there too. ;)

Post by Xose Vazquez Perez
Why does people want XFS? Any _special_ feature?

A couple years ago I was one of the two Linux testers for HP's VA Fibre
Channel enterprise storage product. As such I had to do a lot of
reliability testing under such circumstances as someone accidentally
pulling the fibre channel cable, the device resetting, etc..

ReiserFS
Sucked big arse. Nasty corruption, but that's probably not a suprise to
most here. Then to top it off, on my JBOD at home around that same time
I had a disk develop some bad sectors. I lost nearly every bit of data
on that FS, despite hours and hours of trying to fix it, right down to
editing the FS.

JFS
Was barely reaching 1.0 and would hang the machine when trying to access
FC devices. Every time.

Ext2/3
Massive failures leading to corruption. It was repeatable and reported,
but I don't know what came of it. Last tests we had ext[2,3] had serious
problems when the device went away for short periods of time (IIRC, 45
seconds or so, on the nose).

XFS
The only FS capable of handling the terabyte sized filesystems I was
needing to test. Also it handled extended lack of device due to cable
swapping better than the rest. Further, the recovery of the filesystem
when I would manually corrupt the FS was amazing and far outperformed
others.

Further, we had less issues with things like shared filesystems over
multiple machines (don't ask ...) with XFS than the other (working)
FSes.

Also, unless things have changed since I last looked (entirely likely),
only XFS supported the full ACL stuff via Samba for NT/W2k systems.

Now, bear in mind this was back just before 2.4 came out. Things may
have changed in the last couple years. ;)

[Stephan Windischmann]

Post by Xose Vazquez Perez
Why does people want XFS? Any _special_ feature?

Apart from what has already been said, XFS also has slightly better
performance.

-windi

[Ro]

Well I speak from inexperience, ergo, the reason I am questioning you all.
So, my wrap up of this entire thread: I currently have RH 9.0 production
Servers and since the Errata will end 'soon' for RH 9.0, I was wondering if
moving to Fedora Core 1 would be a smart move. And should I continue with
ext3 or perhaps explore other venues.... JFS perhaps. Your input is GREATLY
appreciated.



Cheers,



Ro

Post by Jesse Keating

Post by Ro
Well, we all know that ReiserFS is FAR from being in development...
it's BEEN out... So I was wondering if someone could objectively
answer this questions. I am really not trying to make anyone
uncomfortable, just curious. :-)

Actually we don't know that. A lot of work is being done on Reiser4,
and
little on 3, and the author has stated that he's more concerned with
feature sets than stability. Not exactly what I want to hear from my fs
developer. Our company gave reiserfs a try a year or 2 back, given it's
merits then, and everybody was saying it was stable, blah blah. It led to
a lot of our customers losing their data when reiser would puke. We're
re-evaulating our file system offerings, and at this point, JFS seems to
be in the lead.

[Michael Davies]

Post by Xose Vazquez Perez
Why does people want XFS? Any _special_ feature?

XFS was developed by SGI a while ago and has been in Irix for a longer
_time_ than any of ext2/3 and reiserfs (not sure on jfs. ext2 probably
has had more instances ever run, but I digress). This speaks for XFS's
rock solid stability.

As also mentioned here, terabyte filesystems and proper ACLs are included.
Important stuff. I'd be installing XFS be default if anaconda had it.

[Jesse Keating]

Post by Michael Davies
As also mentioned here, terabyte filesystems and proper ACLs are
included. Important stuff. I'd be installing XFS be default if anaconda
had it.

Um, ext3 can create up to a 2TB file system. We do it all the time. Oh,
and with RHEL3, there are now ext3 ACLs.

- --
Jesse Keating RHCE MCSE (http://geek.j2solutions.net)
Fedora Legacy Team (http://www.fedora.us/wiki/FedoraLegacy)
Mondo DevTeam (www.mondorescue.org)
GPG Public Key (http://geek.j2solutions.net/jkeating.j2solutions.pub)

Was I helpful? Let others know:
http://svcs.affero.net/rm.php?r=jkeating

[Jeremy Katz]

Post by Michael Davies

Post by Xose Vazquez Perez
Why does people want XFS? Any _special_ feature?

XFS was developed by SGI a while ago and has been in Irix for a longer
_time_ than any of ext2/3 and reiserfs (not sure on jfs. ext2 probably
has had more instances ever run, but I digress). This speaks for XFS's
rock solid stability.

Even if you assume existence for a long time implies stability, it only
implies stability under Irix. The VM and VFS of Linux and Irix are
vastly different in a lot of ways, so it's sort of like saying that
because one SCSI controller is rock solid under one it'll be solid under
the other ;)

*Not* that I'm against other filesystems in general or XFS in
particular. I just caution against over-generalization.

Post by Michael Davies
As also mentioned here, terabyte filesystems and proper ACLs are included.
Important stuff. I'd be installing XFS be default if anaconda had it.

You have to get past the block layer limitations for terabyte
filesystems to be much of an issue -- 2.6 should help there, but could
do with some testing in this area. ext[23] will support up to 8 (iirc,
might have been 16) terabyte filesystems. And ext3 acls are in 2.6 as
well.

Cheers,

Jeremy