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

[Pandu Poluan <pandu@poluan.info>]

On Thu, Oct 3, 2013 at 4:55 PM, Kerin Millar <kerframil@fastmail.co.uk> wrote:
> 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 In my opinion, reiser is a bit outdated ...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
>

XFS is honestly looking mighty good if your host has 8 cores or more:

http://lwn.net/Articles/476263/

If data corruption is *totally* not acceptable, and if you have more
than one disks of similar sizes, ZFS might even be more suitable.

Rgds,
-- 
FdS Pandu E Poluan
~ IT Optimizer ~

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