From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 4.0.0 (2022-12-14) on finch.gentoo.org X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-0.6 required=5.0 tests=DMARC_MISSING, MAILING_LIST_MULTI,RDNS_DYNAMIC autolearn=unavailable autolearn_force=no version=4.0.0 Received: from brazil.sys.kcco.com (leg-66-247-92-2-CHI.sprinthome.com [66.247.92.2]) by chiba.3jane.net (Postfix) with ESMTP id E42DCAC54B for ; Tue, 14 May 2002 10:34:30 -0500 (CDT) Received: from brazil.sys.kcco.com (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by brazil.sys.kcco.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 88729C1F85; Tue, 14 May 2002 10:39:19 -0500 (CDT) Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" From: Jean-Michel Smith To: gentoo-dev@gentoo.org, Alexander Gretencord Subject: Re: [gentoo-dev] reiserfs Date: Tue, 14 May 2002 10:39:19 -0500 X-Mailer: KMail [version 1.4] References: <23DFAA462CC6A64487613B0E242D9FF706EC65@mercury.phoenix-interactive.com> <200205141707.06913.arutha@gmx.de> In-Reply-To: <200205141707.06913.arutha@gmx.de> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Message-Id: <200205141039.19317.jsmith@kcco.com> Sender: gentoo-dev-admin@gentoo.org Errors-To: gentoo-dev-admin@gentoo.org X-BeenThere: gentoo-dev@gentoo.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.0.6 Precedence: bulk Reply-To: gentoo-dev@gentoo.org List-Help: List-Post: List-Subscribe: , List-Id: Gentoo Linux developer list List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: X-Archives-Salt: 3acc6f65-07b0-4649-81f9-9f8d743141c4 X-Archives-Hash: 4ee5be5471e5dde21c5372e5e09d0a49 On Tuesday 14 May 2002 10:07 am, Alexander Gretencord wrote: > Well, many people have run it without problems. SuSE even ships it with > their distribution since ages (before it got into the main kernel tree)= =2E > Without an explanation _why_ you think it's not stable enough the state= ment > is worth nothing. So ACK, this definately needs an entry. First, an appeal to authority (Suse in this case) is a logical fallacy yo= u=20 should not engage in. Just because Suse ships reiser with their distribu= tion=20 doesn't make it stable or safe for production use. In fact, a friend of mine who runs a computer consultancy, and uses Suse = in=20 nearly all of his installations, was bitten very badly by a reiserfs bug = that=20 resulted in near-catastrophic data loss. I say near, because he was able= to=20 recover from backup tapes. Nevertheless it resulted in an allnighter get= ting=20 the system back up, on a more reliable ext2 filesystem, followed by sever= al=20 days work as he moved other installations off of reiser and onto ext2 (hi= s=20 choice, not mine ... I probably would have opted for JFS or ext3 in his=20 particular case). I have personally witnessed data loss using reiser on numerous occasions = =2E..=20 symptoms ranged from strange "undeletable" files that were corrupt, to en= tire=20 directory trees vanishing for no apparent reason (but the disk usage=20 remaining unchanged). No recovery was possible in either case (short of=20 reconstructing a new filesystem from scratch and restoring from backups). In all these cases all of us had all been using reiserfs "for months with= no=20 problems" ... and we still suffered severe data loss. Reiserfs is NOT ready for production use, and the gentoo FAQ is both wise= and=20 friendly for pointing that out and guiding people away from that particul= ar=20 folly. There are plenty of other, much safer filesystems to use, including XFS (= if=20 you don't need bleeding edge experimental features, e.g. can be happy wit= h=20 stock 2.4.18 kernel + xfs patches), JFS, ext3, ext2 (no journalling), and= so=20 forth. I know people tend to get very emotionally attached to whatever=20 filesystem they like, but this IMHO is unwise ... one should be very agno= stic=20 about what fs one chooses to use, rather than defending a particular choi= ce=20 "to the death" as seems so common with software these days. That having been said, there is a plethora of hard evidence as well as=20 anectdotal experiences to learn from, and to indicate that reiser really=20 isn't a safe choice to be making. This is reflected in the gentoo=20 installation documentation, IMHO exactly as it should be.=20 Jean.