Re: Real status of ReiserFS4?

Re: Real status of ReiserFS4?

[Metztli Information Technology]

> All,
> 
> I've searched around on the web a bit and found various folks spouting
> off about Reiser4 here and there.  I am about to reinstall a system and
> want to choose the right filesystem.  I read some report about ReiserFS
> v3 not being multi-thread safe and that ext4 ran circles around it.  I
> was disappointed at the hanging I was getting on ext4,
hmmm...
makes me wonder why it is the default filesystem for Debian, even on cloud images
 expanding to 2TB (Max); I thought it had to do more than being UNIX 2038 compliant:

< https://metztli.it/blog/index.php/amatl/reiser-nahui/reiser4-filesystem-and-the-unix >

> so switched back
> to ReiserFS and got more consistent high performance.  I have a power-
> house system built with a large HW Raid 5 drive and want to reformat
> and repartition that sucker up.  In your opinion, what is the best
> filesystem to use right now?  Keeping in mind that I do low-level
> driver work for my company and am used to hacking around in the kernel,
> so patching a kernel doesn't frighten me at all.
> 
> It looks like Reiser4 still isn't in the mainline kernel... which is
> disappointing to me that we developers also allow political
> bureaucracy
In my experience, FOSS has a lot of moralist-bullsh!tters (bullies actually);
both developers/maintainers and 'evangelists'
who even masturbate on a name change for reiser[fs/4] *without* even contributing
code to or builds of the source.

i.e., < https://twitter.com/BrideOfLinux/status/763008210856972288 >
even referencing Mr. Shishkin GitHub repo for specific critique:
< https://twitter.com/schestowitz/status/908782499714789377 >

> to shadow over potentially better solutions.  So, what is
> the sate of Reiser4 and should I go with that for my 16-core system,
> stick with Reiser3, or grab hold to ext4?
> 
> Thanks for your opinion in advance!

Quirk:
Upon rebooting in a cloud instance as well as in a laptop, there may be times when the patched kernel hangs early
without completing the full boot procedure.
Notwithstanding it is enough to power off the machine and power on back on again (even in cloud instances).
Nevertheless, no data loss I have experienced.

< https://metztli.it/blog/index.php/amatl/amatl-main/install-reports/metztli-reiser4-successful-debian-stretch >
 If you will be doing 15TB, I would
partition with GPT and I would not format with (default) transparent compression until Ed perfects the
technique (yet I am doing transparent compression in my daily use development 1.2TB laptop ;-)


> 
> Andy
> 

Best Professional Regards.

-- 
Jose R R
http://metztli.it
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Re: Real status of ReiserFS4?

[Edward Shishkin]

On 10/04/2017 05:46 PM, ANDY KENNEDY wrote:
>> Basically, it is stable (as of the latest stuff release). However,
>> I would recommend reiser4 only for personal needs, not for production
>> (corporate use). The latter requires some work to be done in active
> Yeah, that was what I was told in the late 90's when I put an early
> rev of ReiserFS on a production server with a whopping 75GB of storage.
>
> Eventually, after about the 5 power loss on the system, it corrupted
> that partition.  Reiserfs-progs was able to recover it, though.  So,
> is this one of those cases where if I put it on a production system it
> will work great as long as I don't improperly drop power on it?

In the late 90's ReiserFS (v3.2) hadn't been possessing even a journal.
Now Reiser4 has an advanced transaction manager allowing to choose a
transaction model (journaling, write-anywhere, etc), which is most
suitable for your storage media and workload.
So, definitely not those cases :)

> I really like the stability of ReiserFS over everything else I've used.
>
>> collaboration with administrators of production systems. Reiser4 has a
> I own all of these systems.  Most are built from scratch.

I am afraid that it can be not enough. Some production-critical issues
require substantial efforts (profiling, fixing, etc). Normally it is a
business for paid developers, while we all are volunteers whose main time
is occupied with other things.

>> number of open tickets/bugreports, but all of those problems are hard
>> reproducible. Every sophisticated file system has a list of such
>> issues, though.
> Yeah, hence the question above.
>
>> It is really hard to corrupt a reiser4 partition in a way that fsck
>> will refuse to fix it. Nevertheless, I wouldn't recommend to use too
>> large partitions. The smaller partition, the larger chances, that I'll
>> take a look at it, if any problems with fsck.
> I have a back-up copy (actually several back-up copies).  And, this is
> data that doesn't change that much, so I can recover fairly easily.
>
>> Also, keep in mind that
>> intelligent compression (default mode) is not optimal for large media-
>> files (seehttps://reiser4.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Reiser4_Howto  for
>> details).
> With a 15TB drive, I'm not worried about compression.  That, IMO, would
> be a performance hit anyway.

Depending on types of data and workload, compression can dramatically
speed up, or slow down things. The best case is working with sources
(compilation, etc). The worst case is removing a large media-file which
contains zeros in its head. If you are not sure about data/workload,
then better turn compression off.

Thanks,
Edward.

Re: Real status of ReiserFS4?

[dimas]

2017-277 15:46 ANDY KENNEDY <ANDY.KENNEDY@adtran.com> wrote:
> Eventually, after about the 5 power loss on the system, it corrupted
> that partition.  Reiserfs-progs was able to recover it, though.  So,
> is this one of those cases where if I put it on a production system it
> will work great as long as I don't improperly drop power on it?

as far as i tried, reiserfs tends to corrupt fairly frequently after power
failures. did not encounter any corruption that fsck could not fix. though. but
reiserfs' fsck seemed to work relatively slow each time.
in contrast, i don't remember any single corruption caused by a power loss on
R4. i run my "home server" with R4 on / for several years without having UPS
(shame on me, but it costs smth, and i'm just too lazy for buying one,
honestly), so, while our electricity is not rock stable, no problems so far.

Re: Real status of ReiserFS4?

[Dušan Čolić]

On Wed, Oct 4, 2017 at 5:46 PM, ANDY KENNEDY <ANDY.KENNEDY@adtran.com> wrote:
>
> > Basically, it is stable (as of the latest stuff release). However,
> > I would recommend reiser4 only for personal needs, not for production
> > (corporate use). The latter requires some work to be done in active
>
> Yeah, that was what I was told in the late 90's when I put an early
> rev of ReiserFS on a production server with a whopping 75GB of storage.
>
> Eventually, after about the 5 power loss on the system, it corrupted
> that partition.  Reiserfs-progs was able to recover it, though.  So,
> is this one of those cases where if I put it on a production system it
> will work great as long as I don't improperly drop power on it?
>
> I really like the stability of ReiserFS over everything else I've used.

I use R4 in few servers that over time had power losses. I never had
problems after it. Never a slightest error.
I had corruptions under following circumstaces and you can read about
it in the archives of this m-l:
1. OOM;
2. Years ago on disk full, but it was fixed since;
3. Kernel panic because of some drivers problems.
4. I had some problematic 10GB qcow2 WinXP image that after few years
developed an error. Dunno if it was R4 related.

Corruptions were always in the form of lost names ad paths of
files/directories, but the data in them was always there, in
lost&found.

I still exclusively use R4 with compression for everything except
video files and virtual machine images. For that I use R4 without
compression.

I would recommend you do the same as there are lot of upsides to
cryptocompress on R4 and CPU overhead is small as it's LZO
compression.

I maintaingGentoo R4 FAQ and I recommend that you read it
https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-706171.html
>
>
> > collaboration with administrators of production systems. Reiser4 has a
>
> I own all of these systems.  Most are built from scratch.
>
> > number of open tickets/bugreports, but all of those problems are hard
> > reproducible. Every sophisticated file system has a list of such
> > issues, though.
>
> Yeah, hence the question above.
>
> >
> > It is really hard to corrupt a reiser4 partition in a way that fsck
> > will refuse to fix it. Nevertheless, I wouldn't recommend to use too
> > large partitions. The smaller partition, the larger chances, that I'll
> > take a look at it, if any problems with fsck.
>
> I have a back-up copy (actually several back-up copies).  And, this is
> data that doesn't change that much, so I can recover fairly easily.


>
>
> > Also, keep in mind that
> > intelligent compression (default mode) is not optimal for large media-
> > files (see https://reiser4.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Reiser4_Howto for
> > details).
>
> With a 15TB drive, I'm not worried about compression.  That, IMO, would
> be a performance hit anyway.

It helps IOPS tremendously especially on small files as it packs them together.
It's not about size of IO it's about IOPS.


>
>
> >
> > Reiser4 is better in all items (performance, features, implementation,
> > maintainability, etc) than its predecessor ReiserFS(v3).

This is true.

>
> >
> > Thanks,
> > Edward.
>
> Thanks Edward!  I'll give ReiserFS4 a shot!
>
> Andy

Dušan
>
> >
> > On 10/04/2017 12:29 AM, ANDY KENNEDY wrote:
> > > All,
> > >
> > > I've searched around on the web a bit and found various folks spouting
> > > off about Reiser4 here and there.  I am about to reinstall a system and
> > > want to choose the right filesystem.  I read some report about ReiserFS
> > > v3 not being multi-thread safe and that ext4 ran circles around it.  I
> > > was disappointed at the hanging I was getting on ext4, so switched back
> > > to ReiserFS and got more consistent high performance.  I have a power-
> > > house system built with a large HW Raid 5 drive and want to reformat
> > > and repartition that sucker up.  In your opinion, what is the best
> > > filesystem to use right now?  Keeping in mind that I do low-level
> > > driver work for my company and am used to hacking around in the kernel,
> > > so patching a kernel doesn't frighten me at all.
> > >
> > > It looks like Reiser4 still isn't in the mainline kernel... which is
> > > disappointing to me that we developers also allow political
> > > bureaucracy to shadow over potentially better solutions.  So, what is
> > > the sate of Reiser4 and should I go with that for my 16-core system,
> > > stick with Reiser3, or grab hold to ext4?
> > >
> > > Thanks for your opinion in advance!
> > >
> > > Andy
> > >
> > > --
> > > To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe reiserfs-devel" in
> > > the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
> > > More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
> >
> > --
> > To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe reiserfs-devel" in
> > the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
> > More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
>
> --
> To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe reiserfs-devel" in
> the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
> More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html

RE: Real status of ReiserFS4?

[ANDY KENNEDY]

> Basically, it is stable (as of the latest stuff release). However,
> I would recommend reiser4 only for personal needs, not for production
> (corporate use). The latter requires some work to be done in active

Yeah, that was what I was told in the late 90's when I put an early
rev of ReiserFS on a production server with a whopping 75GB of storage.

Eventually, after about the 5 power loss on the system, it corrupted
that partition.  Reiserfs-progs was able to recover it, though.  So,
is this one of those cases where if I put it on a production system it
will work great as long as I don't improperly drop power on it?

I really like the stability of ReiserFS over everything else I've used.

> collaboration with administrators of production systems. Reiser4 has a

I own all of these systems.  Most are built from scratch.

> number of open tickets/bugreports, but all of those problems are hard
> reproducible. Every sophisticated file system has a list of such
> issues, though.

Yeah, hence the question above.

> 
> It is really hard to corrupt a reiser4 partition in a way that fsck
> will refuse to fix it. Nevertheless, I wouldn't recommend to use too
> large partitions. The smaller partition, the larger chances, that I'll
> take a look at it, if any problems with fsck.

I have a back-up copy (actually several back-up copies).  And, this is
data that doesn't change that much, so I can recover fairly easily.

> Also, keep in mind that
> intelligent compression (default mode) is not optimal for large media-
> files (see https://reiser4.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Reiser4_Howto for
> details).

With a 15TB drive, I'm not worried about compression.  That, IMO, would
be a performance hit anyway.

> 
> Reiser4 is better in all items (performance, features, implementation,
> maintainability, etc) than its predecessor ReiserFS(v3).
> 
> Thanks,
> Edward.

Thanks Edward!  I'll give ReiserFS4 a shot!

Andy

> 
> On 10/04/2017 12:29 AM, ANDY KENNEDY wrote:
> > All,
> >
> > I've searched around on the web a bit and found various folks spouting
> > off about Reiser4 here and there.  I am about to reinstall a system and
> > want to choose the right filesystem.  I read some report about ReiserFS
> > v3 not being multi-thread safe and that ext4 ran circles around it.  I
> > was disappointed at the hanging I was getting on ext4, so switched back
> > to ReiserFS and got more consistent high performance.  I have a power-
> > house system built with a large HW Raid 5 drive and want to reformat
> > and repartition that sucker up.  In your opinion, what is the best
> > filesystem to use right now?  Keeping in mind that I do low-level
> > driver work for my company and am used to hacking around in the kernel,
> > so patching a kernel doesn't frighten me at all.
> >
> > It looks like Reiser4 still isn't in the mainline kernel... which is
> > disappointing to me that we developers also allow political
> > bureaucracy to shadow over potentially better solutions.  So, what is
> > the sate of Reiser4 and should I go with that for my 16-core system,
> > stick with Reiser3, or grab hold to ext4?
> >
> > Thanks for your opinion in advance!
> >
> > Andy
> >
> > --
> > To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe reiserfs-devel" in
> > the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
> > More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
> 
> --
> To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe reiserfs-devel" in
> the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
> More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html

Re: Real status of ReiserFS4?

[Edward Shishkin]

Hello.

Basically, it is stable (as of the latest stuff release). However,
I would recommend reiser4 only for personal needs, not for production
(corporate use). The latter requires some work to be done in active
collaboration with administrators of production systems. Reiser4 has a
number of open tickets/bugreports, but all of those problems are hard
reproducible. Every sophisticated file system has a list of such
issues, though.

It is really hard to corrupt a reiser4 partition in a way that fsck
will refuse to fix it. Nevertheless, I wouldn't recommend to use too
large partitions. The smaller partition, the larger chances, that I'll
take a look at it, if any problems with fsck. Also, keep in mind that
intelligent compression (default mode) is not optimal for large media-
files (see https://reiser4.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Reiser4_Howto for
details).

Reiser4 is better in all items (performance, features, implementation,
maintainability, etc) than its predecessor ReiserFS(v3).

Thanks,
Edward.

On 10/04/2017 12:29 AM, ANDY KENNEDY wrote:
> All,
>
> I've searched around on the web a bit and found various folks spouting
> off about Reiser4 here and there.  I am about to reinstall a system and
> want to choose the right filesystem.  I read some report about ReiserFS
> v3 not being multi-thread safe and that ext4 ran circles around it.  I
> was disappointed at the hanging I was getting on ext4, so switched back
> to ReiserFS and got more consistent high performance.  I have a power-
> house system built with a large HW Raid 5 drive and want to reformat
> and repartition that sucker up.  In your opinion, what is the best
> filesystem to use right now?  Keeping in mind that I do low-level
> driver work for my company and am used to hacking around in the kernel,
> so patching a kernel doesn't frighten me at all.
>
> It looks like Reiser4 still isn't in the mainline kernel... which is
> disappointing to me that we developers also allow political
> bureaucracy to shadow over potentially better solutions.  So, what is
> the sate of Reiser4 and should I go with that for my 16-core system,
> stick with Reiser3, or grab hold to ext4?
>
> Thanks for your opinion in advance!
>
> Andy
>
> --
> To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe reiserfs-devel" in
> the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
> More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html

Real status of ReiserFS4?

[ANDY KENNEDY]

All,

I've searched around on the web a bit and found various folks spouting
off about Reiser4 here and there.  I am about to reinstall a system and
want to choose the right filesystem.  I read some report about ReiserFS
v3 not being multi-thread safe and that ext4 ran circles around it.  I
was disappointed at the hanging I was getting on ext4, so switched back
to ReiserFS and got more consistent high performance.  I have a power-
house system built with a large HW Raid 5 drive and want to reformat
and repartition that sucker up.  In your opinion, what is the best
filesystem to use right now?  Keeping in mind that I do low-level
driver work for my company and am used to hacking around in the kernel,
so patching a kernel doesn't frighten me at all.

It looks like Reiser4 still isn't in the mainline kernel... which is
disappointing to me that we developers also allow political
bureaucracy to shadow over potentially better solutions.  So, what is
the sate of Reiser4 and should I go with that for my 16-core system,
stick with Reiser3, or grab hold to ext4?

Thanks for your opinion in advance!

Andy