ext3 on woody safe for a production machine?

[Johann Spies <jspies@maties.sun.ac.za>]

I am a newbie ftp-administrator trying to build a new ftp-server for
our university.

Setup:

Compaq Proliant 3700
Redhat 7.1 (currently with 2.4.9 kernel)
Three other machines each with 4x40g IDE hard disks.  They are Enbd
servers with the Compaq as client.  The Compaq as ftp-server then use
the nbd-devices as storage giving us just less than 480G of space.

While testing the software and hardware we had the following problems
so far:

Kernel unstability with 2.4.9-ac3, ac16 and ac18 and some of 
unstability using reiserfs on the nbd-devices. We did not determine
whether the problem was on the kernel's side or from reiserfs in
combination with nbd.

Now I want to try ext3 on the nbd-devices.  The reason is that
fsck'ing the 12 nbd-devices takes a lot of time.  A journalling file
system can help. I have 6 unofficial woody CD's and I see that
ext3-utilities are part of woody (which is not the case with Redhat
7.1 which most of the machines here use).  

What are the experiences in this group with woody and ext3?  Would you
recommend it for a setup like ours?


Regards

Johann
-- 
Johann Spies          Telefoon: 021-808 4036
Informasietegnologie, Universiteit van Stellenbosch

     "Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of 
      God; for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither 
      tempteth he any man; But every man is tempted, when he
      is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed."          
                                       James 1:13,14