Re: Which FS to use ?
On Wed, 17 Sep 2003 09:10:10 +0200, Jacob Anawalt wrote:
> In other cases, because ext3 is writing it's journal to a disk every few
> seconds, it could be a little slower. Since most systems aren't normally
> under intense I/O, this is usually unnoticable. You do have the option
> of storing the journal to a different disk.
The 2.4 series had some serious problems in that area. I once had several
ext3 filesystems mounted and observed regular "load spikes". I.e. the
system would jump from 0 to 100% CPU and freeze (!) for about half a
second. Then everything goes back to normal again, and a few minutes later
comes the next spike. I think it had something to do with the flushing of
the ext3 journal -- remounting the same partitions as ext2 fixed it. That
behaviour was simply unbearable for a workstation and made me abandon
ext3. Maybe the preempt/low latency patches could help nowadays.
> I've read people suggesting to not use ext3 over ext2 on some
> directories (which means different mounts for those directories.) I
> think they talked about places like /var/spool/news but I could be very
> wrong.
/var/spool/news would probably be better served by ReiserFS or XFS. Those
filesystems are a bit faster when it comes to directories which conatain
literally thousands of files. I haven't tried both, Reiser because of the
ever-repeating stories about data corruption and XFS because it hasn't
made its way into the vanilla kernel yet.
> Maybe /etc would be better served by a Reiser FS.
/etc is too small to make a difference anyway, and is crucial for the
system to boot. I'd go the safe route and choose a rock solid ext2 or
ext3.
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