ext3 and/or reiserfs, advantages/disadvantages?

[mstich]

What are you the advantages/disadvantages of ext3 and reiserfs? Is it worth changing too? I've been using ext2 for a long while and haven't had any problems, so I don't know if I need the change.

[Craig McPherson]

Ext3 isn't actually a new filesystem, it's Ext2 with journaling code added. An ext2 filesystem and an ext3 filesystem are exactly the same on disk, however when that filesystem is mounted as ext3, journaling will be done on it, and when it's mounted as ext2, it won't.

The advantage is that this makes "upgrade" simple: you just mount your ext2 partitions as ext3, create a journal file, and that's all there is to it. The disadvantage is that it's built on the obsolete ext2 filesystem, and the journaling is HORRIBLY slow because it does full data journaling instead of metadata journaling -- disk writes take twice as long.

ReiserFS is an entirely new filesystem. In most regards, it's amazing. It's incredibly fast (well, moderately faster than ext2/3 at least), the journaling is incredible, it's more efficient with space, it used more advanced storage and retrieval algorhythms, it's fully POSIX complaint, etc. etc. If you're in a production environment or running any kind of server, you NEED it. If not, you should still try it out anyway in order to be leet.

The disadvantages of ReiserFS:

1. It doesn't support the set of file attributes that ext2 does (immutable, etc)

2. It doesn't support certain mount options that ext2 does (like choosing bsd or sysv group ownership)

3. The ReiserFS code is changing rapidly -- filesystems created with a particular version of the ReiserFS code will be compatible with newer versions of the ReiserFS code, but not with older versions of the ReiserFS code. This shouldn't be a problem if you're careful.

[mstich]

Wow! That was pretty extensive Craig. Thanks for your help.