From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from pigeon.gentoo.org ([208.92.234.80] helo=lists.gentoo.org) by finch.gentoo.org with esmtp (Exim 4.60) (envelope-from ) id 1S6Q0m-0001Pu-Mo for garchives@archives.gentoo.org; Sat, 10 Mar 2012 17:23:21 +0000 Received: from pigeon.gentoo.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by pigeon.gentoo.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 4086DE065E; Sat, 10 Mar 2012 17:23:07 +0000 (UTC) Received: from smtp.webfaction.com (mail6.webfaction.com [74.55.86.74]) by pigeon.gentoo.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 26261E065E for ; Sat, 10 Mar 2012 17:22:04 +0000 (UTC) Received: from localhost (c-24-18-250-30.hsd1.wa.comcast.net [24.18.250.30]) by smtp.webfaction.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id BC53B20A5A8E for ; Sat, 10 Mar 2012 11:21:01 -0600 (CST) Date: Sat, 10 Mar 2012 09:20:31 -0800 From: Bryan Gardiner To: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org Subject: Re: [gentoo-user] Best file system for portage tree? Message-ID: <20120310092031.01a02da5@khumba.net> In-Reply-To: References: <20120310143015.6d507af3@weird.wonkology.org> X-Mailer: Claws Mail 3.8.0 (GTK+ 2.24.8; x86_64-pc-linux-gnu) Precedence: bulk List-Post: List-Help: List-Unsubscribe: List-Subscribe: List-Id: Gentoo Linux mail X-BeenThere: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org Reply-to: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Archives-Salt: 42cab266-3624-4501-b8b2-1ceb47b28d11 X-Archives-Hash: f9eb5d2181faf6a9a23b2e8d27338754 On Sat, 10 Mar 2012 22:09:26 +0700 Pandu Poluan wrote: > On Mar 10, 2012 8:33 PM, "Alex Schuster" wrote: > > > > Hi there! > > > > Is there an advantage in putting the portage tree on an extra > > partition? > > > > Currently, I'm using reiserfs, because I read that it is efficient > > when using many small files. On the other hand I also heard that it > > tends to get slower with every emerge --sync. > > > > Space is no longer an argument in these days, at least for my > > desktop machine. But I would like to optimize for speed -- emerge > > -DputnVj @world takes quite a while to calculate, I assume this is > > because so many ebuild files have to be accessed. > > > > Any tips on this? Does it make sense to use a special file system > > just for the portage tree? What would be best? Would it help to > > re-create this file system from time to time in case it gets slower > > with every sync? Or wouldn't I notice a difference if I just used a > > big ext4 partition for all portage related stuff? > > > > Anyone using a compressed RAM file system for that? :) > > > > This had been my burning question when I was deploying the company's > production server, and forced me to do some research: > > * reiserfs is amazingly fast for reads, but suffers on simultaneous > writes > * reiserfs does not have inode limits > * reiserfs' notail affects performance greatly depending on the > nature of the system: I/O-bound (use notail) or CPU-bound (don't use > notail) > * reiserfs, if mounted without notail, is very space-efficient > > So, I end up with the following mix: > > * ext2 for /boot > * reiserfs for /usr/portage and /var/tmp (RAM is at premium; can't use > tmpfs) > * ext4 for everything else > > This cocktail has been serving me well. I don't need advanced > filesystems like ZFS, XFS, or btrfs, because my servers are > virtualized, and the advanced features (e.g., snapshot) is handled by > the underlying hypervisor (XenServer) and SAN Storage (we use NetApp). > > Rgds, That's very close to what I do (though not for the same extensively-researched reasons :). I added an extra bit of twiddling in make.conf: DISTDIR="/usr/local/distfiles" # On /. PKGDIR="/usr/local/packages" # On /. PORTDIR="/mnt/portage/gentoo" # /mnt/portage is reiserfs and has /layman too This way the requirements for the portage partition grow much more gradually (changed that due to overflow once), and on the random chance that reiserfs gets corrupted, I don't lose all my fetch-restricted distfiles. - Bryan