Re: [gentoo-user] which filesystem is more suitable for /var/tmp/portage?

[Kerin Millar <kerframil@fastmail.co.uk>]

On 18/09/2013 16:09, Alan McKinnon wrote:
> On 18/09/2013 16:05, Peter Humphrey wrote:
>> On Wednesday 18 Sep 2013 14:52:30 Ralf Ramsauer wrote:
>>
>>> In my opinion, reiser is a bit outdated ...
>>
>> What is the significance of its date? I use reiserfs on my Atom box for /var,
>> /var/cache/squid and /usr/portage, and on my workstation for /usr/portage  and
>> /home/prh/.VirtualBox. It's never given me any trouble at all.
>
>
> Sooner or later, reiser is going to bitrot. The ReiserFS code itself
> will not change, but everything around it and what it plugs into will
> change. When that happens (not if - when), there is no-one to fix the
> bug and you will find yourself up the creek sans paddle
>
> An FS is not like a widget set, you can't really live with and
> workaround any defects that develop. When an FS needs patching, it needs
> patching, no ifs and buts. Reiser may nominally have a maintainer but in
> real terms there is effectively no-one
>
> Circumstances have caused ReiserFS to become a high-risk scenario and
> even though it might perform faultlessly right now, continued use should
> be evaluated in terms of that very real risk.

Another problem with ReiserFS is its intrinsic dependency on the BKL 
(big kernel lock). Aside from hampering scalability, it necessitated 
compromise when the time came to eliminate the BKL:

https://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=8ebc423

Note the performance loss introduced by the patch; whether that was 
addressed I do not know.

In my view, ReiserFS is only useful for saving space through tail 
packing. Unfortunately, tail packing makes it slower still (an issue 
that was supposed to be resolved for good in Reiser4).

In general, I would recommend ext4 or xfs as the go-to filesystems these 
days.

--Kerin