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Ask ReiserFS Project Leader Hans Reiser 343

Posted by Roblimo from the not-the-kind-of-journal-you-keep-on-Slashdot dept.
Hans Reiser leads a successful Free Software project that has attracted plenty of attention, many users, and even that Holy Grail of so many who have started their own Free or Open Source projects: Big-time funding from DARPA, SuSE, and others. How did he do it? What's his advice for other project leaders? Ask him! And ask him any other question you have in mind. Please stick to one question per post, and avoid questions that can be answered with a few minutes' worth of research. We'll publish Mr. Reiser's answers as soon as he gets them back to us.
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Ask ReiserFS Project Leader Hans Reiser More

Ask ReiserFS Project Leader Hans Reiser

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  • Name... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 09, 2003 @11:12AM (#6150486)
    Where did you come up with the name for your project? :)

    • 3 Questions for Open Source Project Management (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Dominic465 ( 321507 ) on Monday June 09, 2003 @11:36AM (#6150788)
      (1) Software project management techniques seem to vary by discipline. Some groups follow the traditional âoewaterfallâ(TM) model others follow Rapid Programming models â" Do you try to follow a particular style? (2) Classic project management spends a lot of time accounting for resources. I can imagine that an open source project has people signing-on and dropping off. How did you keep assignments & scheduling under control? (3) Have you come up with any tips or tricks that work for managing your project that might be useful to other software development Project Managers?

    • More to the point - and I've checked but not found it - how do you pronounce 'reiserfs'?

      1. riser fs
      2. razor fs
      3. none of the above (please fill in blank): _______

  • What is the future of ReiserFS... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Gortbusters.org ( 637314 ) on Monday June 09, 2003 @11:12AM (#6150491) Homepage Journal
    When you look at your Linux installation scripts today, you see that ext3 is all over popular distrobutions like RedHat. ReiserFS used to be the most popular journaling filesystem for Linux, but how will it shape up given the mass adoption of ext3?

    • Re:What is the future of ReiserFS... (Score:5, Informative)

      by arth1 ( 260657 ) on Monday June 09, 2003 @11:34AM (#6150766) Homepage Journal
      ReiserFS main competitor isn't really EXT3.
      EXT3 is a journaling addition to EXT2, and much more interesting for people who want to change their existing file systems instead of creating new file systems. Note that EXT3 is slower than both ReiserFS and EXT2, but it does have journaling, and provides faster reboots :-)

      The main competitor for performance is SGI's excellent XFS. The latest implementations are quite solid, and the performance likewise are excellent. Even compared to ReiserFS.
      Both ReiserFS and XFS suffer from the potential of data loss on system failures, and XFS probably more so than ReiserFS, as tiny files might not be committed at all. However, for RAID users, I can not see any reason to use ReiserFS instead of XFS, and definitely not EXT3 unless upgrading the file system.

      Regards,
      --
      Arthur Hagen
      • However, for RAID users, I can not see any reason to use ReiserFS instead of XFS, and definitely not EXT3 unless upgrading the file system.

        I can. ReiserFS is included in current stable-series kernels, while XFS is not, hence XFS users have to rely on a non-standard, patched kernel.

      • SGI's XFS still occasionally hangs my machine under heavy load. Plus, by the time they have a release out for 2.4.20 (they still don't), I'm sure I'll be running 2.4.21. In addition, it's still not part of the standard kernel sources. XFS would have to be considered the least supported choice of the three.

        Even though ext3 is a journaling filesystem, it still does a lengthy (and annoying) filesystem check every 20 mounts or so. To its credit it has never found an error, but still. I thought getting rid
        • Even though ext3 is a journaling filesystem, it still does a lengthy (and annoying) filesystem check every 20 mounts or so. To its credit it has never found an error, but still. I thought getting rid of that stuff was why we wanted journaling filesystems.

          I personally think that the occasional check is probably a good idea, but if it annoys you then you can always change the interval, or even disable it.

          Just use "tune2fs -c <how many mounts> /dev/PARTITIONNAME"

          -c 0 should cause it to not use that f

        • SGI's XFS still occasionally hangs my machine under heavy load. Plus, by the time they have a release out for 2.4.20 (they still don't), I'm sure I'll be running 2.4.21.

          Just go to http://oss.sgi.com/projects/xfs/patchlist.html [sgi.com] and pick up the patch against 2.4.20. Works very well for me. All the releases get you is a bunch of release notes and rpms against RedHat kernels. I always get these patches which come out very promptly after the stock kernel release and work very well.

      • Ext3 deals in multiples of whole blocks, and its dir structure is simplistic. It's been my experience that this plays nicer with slow drives and crypto loop filesystems. ReiserFS by contrast tends to thrash around writing itty bitty pieces of files and metadata.

  • Why ReiserFS? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by wizzy403 ( 303479 ) on Monday June 09, 2003 @11:14AM (#6150509)
    What specific benefits would I see by switching my box to ReiserFS as opposed to EXT3 or one of the many other journalling file systems that Linux now supports? At this rate, seems like I could be reformatting my hard drives every week.

    • Re:Why ReiserFS? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Spacelord ( 27899 ) on Monday June 09, 2003 @11:19AM (#6150572)
      I chose ReiserFS over ext3 because it allows online resizing of my filesystems (in combination with the excellent LVM [sistina.com] of course).

    • Re:Why ReiserFS? (Score:2, Informative)

      by Deth_Master ( 598324 )
      It was significantly faster for me. I downloaded movies and junk off of newsgroups. When I would open one of KDE's windows to start Parring/Unraring it would sit there for quite a while and the hard drive light was on as it was reading the information. When I switched to ReiserFS just to try it, it took significantly less time to load the information. It's a lot faster than ext3 and its just as secure if not more.
      I also like the way it's designed it's written so that you can put modules in it. Say you want

  • Good business planning (Score:5, Interesting)

    by mao che minh ( 611166 ) * on Monday June 09, 2003 @11:14AM (#6150512) Journal
    Did you embark on this project in hopes of making a profitable business? It certainly seems that way, considering that you went looking for sponsorship and even planned pay-per-incident [namesys.com] support, showing that you were prepared to work the whole "support revenue" angle.

    Now you just need to hire someone to desire a modern, more "commercially pleasing" website. =)

    • Re:Good business planning (Score:3, Informative)

      by Surak ( 18578 ) *
      More than just the support revenue angle, Hans has made money off of reiserfs by directly selling the code. From the reiserfs/README file:


      Source code files that contain the phrase "licensing governed by reiserfs/README" are "governed files" throughout this file. Governed files are licensed under the GPL. The portions of them owned by Hans Reiser, or authorized to be licensed by him, have been in the past, and likely will be in the future, licensed to other parties under other licenses.

      Among his cus

  • ReiserFS and laptops (Score:5, Interesting)

    by strredwolf ( 532 ) on Monday June 09, 2003 @11:15AM (#6150530) Homepage Journal
    My main question(s) is this(these): Is ReiserFS tunable to reduce usage of a laptop HD? If not, will it? As is, it's great on low capacity (under 1 gig) drives (I'm not sure how much overhead it imposes in comparision to ext2/ext3). However, it also likes to keep the drive active, which drains laptop batteries.

    • Re:ReiserFS and laptops (Score:5, Informative)

      by Lukey Boy ( 16717 ) on Monday June 09, 2003 @11:38AM (#6150803) Homepage
      I had the same problem. Disable access time in your fstab file and the drive will not be so frequent - apparently ReiserFS spools and flushes the atime data, keeping everything spun up. Make a line in fstab like this:

      /dev/hda5 / reiserfs noatime,errors=remount-ro 0 1

      In fact, I disable access time tracking on every box I work with. I haven't found a worthwhile reason to ever enable it. And that's my 2 cents!

      • Re:ReiserFS and laptops (Score:3, Informative)

        by arth1 ( 260657 )
        atime can be quite useful for caches, like client and proxy web caches and man page caches. It's also used for other services that expire data based on access time, like usenet leaf servers, and log rotating programs.

        Before turning off atime, I advise that an effort is made to identify what data really needs atime, and if possible create separate partitions for those, with atime enabled.

        Regards,
        --
        *Art

      • Re:ReiserFS and laptops (Score:3, Informative)

        by Utoxin ( 26011 )
        atime is necessary for one major component of a lot of websites: The PHP Session files.

        The default PHP session handler uses the atime of the files to expire them properly. If they don't have atime, they get expired prematurely. (I think... It's been a while since I made the mistake of noatime on the partition that holds the session files.)

        My solution to this is to use noatime everywhere except the /tmp partition. I also use notail on the /tmp partition, and anywhere that has frequent file IO.

      • Re:ReiserFS and laptops (Score:2, Informative)

        by vofka ( 572268 )
        Wait until one of your boxes gets r00ted, and you (or some other poor soul dealing with one of your mangled boxes) need to do some fairly in-depth forensic analysis on the box to work out exactly what was happening, to what file, in what order.

        The Access Time attribute can yield some useful clues to what was going on during an attack when you are doing a forensic analysis. Sure, there are plenty of other things to look at before you get that deep into things, but it's still useful to have sometimes!
      • Wow, three replies with good points. Again, I've never found a worthwhile reason for me to activate it - luckily I've yet to have a box r00ted (knock on wood).

  • Guideposts? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by TopShelf ( 92521 ) on Monday June 09, 2003 @11:17AM (#6150552) Homepage Journal
    Having obtained financing for the project, how does that impact the future direction of development? How do you balance the interests of developers, users and sponsors to choose which updates to pursue?

  • So here we go ... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by SuperDuG ( 134989 ) <<kt.celce> <ta> <eb>> on Monday June 09, 2003 @11:18AM (#6150568) Homepage Journal
    As an opensource programmer and a rather large figure in the opensource community...

    You've probably noticed that there are quite a few journaling file systems for Linux and other Open/Free/Unixie operating systems that are fairly open or completely open source. Have you ever thought about getting together and making "THE" journaling filesystem for these free OS's? I know that open source is all about choice, but as you probably also know there are certain things EXT3, XSF, etc. can do that ReiserFS cannot. If their could be a hybrid made from the big journaling filesystems would you be part of it?

  • Another reiser4 (Score:2, Interesting)

    by $alex_n42 ( 679887 )
    Once Reiser4 comes out, should I switch or just stick to ReiserFS? Why, why not and so forth?

    • Re:Another reiser4 (Score:3, Informative)

      by Wolfrider ( 856 )
      --Reiser4 was planned from the ground up to surpass v3. One of its features is delayed block allocation until write-to-disk, which is expected to make the whole filesystem much more efficient. They will also be making the size of the journal smaller, which should finally enable me to start using Reiserfs on 100-Meg Zip disks. :)

      --Hans has said in the past that he believes filesystems should be re-written from scratch every few years, so they can take advantage of algorithm improvements and new concepts.

  • Hash collisions (Score:5, Interesting)

    by gazbo ( 517111 ) on Monday June 09, 2003 @11:19AM (#6150576)
    It is fairly well known that on a large filesystem the probability of a hash collision becomes unavoidable, and in ReiserFS that results in data-loss as the original data is overwritten.

    Although its speed and (otherwise) good level of data integrity is of great interest to my employers, before I can recommend it to such a large company, I would like to know how and when you intend to put in a fix.

    • Re:Hash collisions (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Uh, I'm not sure you want to ask a question on which your boss's decision or your job depends in a Slashdot interview thread...
    • Good god, is this truly the case? I don't think I'd trust the filesystem even after this bug was fixed ... who knows what one could lose -- invisibly, allowing backups to become corrupted if they're not verified against each other -- due to some other cavalier mistreatment of precious data.

      Maybe this is why data like prescriptions shouldn't be stored in a filesystem. And I was just starting to think that filesystems were starting to get to the point where that attitude should be revisited. Maybe with XF

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Monday June 09, 2003 @11:20AM (#6150586)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Why did you bother? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by BeowulfSchaeffer ( 588150 ) on Monday June 09, 2003 @11:21AM (#6150599)
    What was so lacking in other file systems that you felt compelled to write your own? How do you think yours compares with the others?

  • Does Reiser4 have a chance merging into 2.6? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Xpilot ( 117961 ) on Monday June 09, 2003 @11:23AM (#6150636) Homepage
    I've been a fan of Reiserfs ever since I started using it, and I've been very impressed by its speed. I'm really anticipating Reiser4, and I hope it'll get merged into 2.6. However the last I heard about this is that Linus hasn't read your docs yet, and the status page on kernelnewbies [kernelnewbies.org] shows Reiser4 to be "pending". Can you give us any insight on what's going on?

  • Future of File Systems (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Simon ( 815 ) * <.simon. .at. .simonzone.com.> on Monday June 09, 2003 @11:24AM (#6150639) Homepage
    Mr Reiser,

    Can you clarify your long term goals with respect to ReiserFS and file system design in geek lay man's terms?

    I'm refering to your Future Vision paper in particular. How would this kind of system be used on a day to day basis?

    Right now any mention here of adding database like functionality to a file system is met with crude comments about SQL... Some explaination would really help.

    cheers,

    --
    Simon

  • Undelete (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    When will reiserfs have undelete facility (a la) debugfs for ext2/3?

  • Database-like features (Score:5, Interesting)

    by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) <drink@hyperlogos.org> on Monday June 09, 2003 @11:24AM (#6150650) Homepage Journal
    As I understand, what ReiserFS offers that "enterprise-class" journaling filesystems like JFS and XFS don't is the ability to treat the filesystem more like a database and less like a tree, but I haven't really heard of anyone getting serious about using this functionality. Why did you bother to add it, who do you think will get the most use out of it, and how would you promote it, given the chance?

  • Reiserfs vs. ext3 (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Rosco P. Coltrane ( 209368 ) on Monday June 09, 2003 @11:25AM (#6150659)
    I've used reiserfs for years and was always very satisfied with its performance and stability. Recently, I convinced myself that ext3 had gotten as stable as reiserfs. So I switched to ext3, mainly because I ext3 == ext2 + journal, so should the need arise, I can mount my ext3 partition as an ext2 one. I haven't run any test on my new ext3 partition, but they look like they're doing okay and ext3 behaves well in case of a crash.

    So fo me, today, in terms of usability ext3 == reiserfs + ext2 backward compatibility. As much as I hate to admit it, I have now given up on reiserfs.

    So my questions are : can you compare reiserfs and ext3 in terms of performance and reliability, i.e. are there good reasons to keep using reiserfs ? Do you think ext3 might become the de-facto standard for Linux journaling filesystems ? How would you feel about it, after all the work you've done on reiserfs ? :-)

  • Versioning (Score:5, Interesting)

    by tjansen ( 2845 ) on Monday June 09, 2003 @11:30AM (#6150715) Homepage
    Beside the finding and organizing files, the biggest problem for desktop users today is probably that changes on the file system are not recoverable. It is easy to accidentally overwrite a file and lose your work, and the only only sane way to solve these kinds of problems would be to make it possible to revert changes.

    Several research systems have been created, like the Elephant File System [princeton.edu], but none of them made it into the mainstream free and commercial operating systems. Are there any specific reasons why nobody offers recovery (high complexity in implementation, very bad effect on performance, etc) or is it just because FS designers don't see the need for it?

  • speed with many many small files (Score:5, Interesting)

    by donkiemaster ( 654606 ) on Monday June 09, 2003 @11:35AM (#6150778)
    We ran reiserfs for a short period a few years ago because we were saving data to 10's of millions of small files, and reiser seemed like a perfect fit. We had to stop however because as we added more and more files, disk access slowed down more and more. It eventually became almost unusable and we had to switch back to ext2. How much faster is it now than it was then? Have you completely solved this problem?

  • Filesystems and metadata (Score:5, Interesting)

    by androse ( 59759 ) on Monday June 09, 2003 @11:39AM (#6150822) Homepage

    In your Future Vision white paper [namesys.com], last modified in January 2001, you outline several very interesting ideas about metadata.

    Several developements have taken place since : the extensible attributes of BeFS has been burried with BeOS, the database-like metadata of Longhorn (aka Yukon) may actually be a separate layer from the filesystem altogether, and Apple is also moving all metadata out of the filesystem to XML files shared between applications (see iLife package).

    My question : What is your current take on the metadata debate ? Do you still think the filesystem is the right place to handle metadata ? Any predictions ?

  • Snapshots? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by afidel ( 530433 ) on Monday June 09, 2003 @11:41AM (#6150837)
    As a leading expert on linux filesystems I was wondering whether you were aware of any snapshot implementations for linux similar to those found in Network Appliance filers. Since working in a shop that used Netapp's I have always found myself wishing for the admin time saving feature of snapshots without the high cost of a filer. Veritas's snapshoting is whole volume only as are the other solutions I have seen outside of Netapp, is this a technical hurdle that no one else has been able to jump or is it a patent issue? Thanks for your time.

    • Re:Snapshots? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Spacelord ( 27899 )
      LVM [sistina.com] has snapshot capabilities built in, independent of the filesystem (as it should be!).

      I haven't used it in a production environment yet, but I've experimented with it and it seemed to work well.
    • LVM does what you want.

    • Why the difference (Score:3, Informative)

      by dorfsmay ( 566262 )
      Another big reason why a lot of people implement snapshot differently than NetApps, is to avoid shooting yourself in the foot. With NetApps, the snapshot data is kept on the same volume as the data itself, which leads to situation where you jump from say 50% usage to 99% just like that overnight (the snapshot area is allowed to run over the data area). This is quite a delicate situation as deleting files makes things worse (you have to get rid of old snapshots to free up space). I have seen big production

  • reiser4 plugins (Score:5, Interesting)

    by i_am_pi ( 570652 ) <i_am_pi_@hotmai[ ]om ['l.c' in gap]> on Monday June 09, 2003 @11:43AM (#6150867) Homepage Journal
    Will dynamically-loadable filesystem plugins be feasible, or practical? What scope will the plugins have? Encryption/decryption is obvious, but what about more interesting things, like scan-on-access Antivirus, or perhaps a mail spool could be mounted with some kind of spamassassin plugin.

  • A question that's interested me for some time… (Score:5, Interesting)

    by shic ( 309152 ) on Monday June 09, 2003 @11:45AM (#6150882)
    I've often wondered about the most effective ways to lay-out files on a block device. While there are many obvious solutions, it seems, to my mind at least, a hard problem to determine an optimal solution. Assuming file-system goals include:
    • Minimizing Inner/Outer fragmentation
    • Maximising locality of reference
    • Minimizing the cost of file extension
    I'd like to know how Reiser FS approached these conflicting goals. Has Reiser FS used any mathematical models to evaluate long-term stability/performance?

  • Double-edged sword of DARPA Funding (Score:3, Interesting)

    by landoltjp ( 676315 ) on Monday June 09, 2003 @11:45AM (#6150884)
    Given the problems encountered by Mark West when DARPA pulled its funding [slashdot.org] on the OpenBSD [openbsd.org] project, are you concerned about what strings may be attached to such funding for ReiserFS, be they implied or explicit?
  • I'm very appreciated your effort in bring enterprise elements to Linux, it's people like you make Linux success nowaday. However, I see that you or your project team seems to push the journalling fs concept too far: from root to /usr, to any single partition in a system. May be I'm a bit old-school, but journalling fs should be used only on fs which require failover protection. It's a plain waste of resource to make, say, boot and /usr journalling, for example, as they are supposed to be running readonly in

  • where next? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by wfmcwalter ( 124904 ) on Monday June 09, 2003 @11:50AM (#6150963) Homepage
    Hans,

    Reiser FS is already a pretty mature, stable, usable product. Once V4 is done, is there really much work left to be done on ReiserFS proper? Do you have a giant to-do list that'll keep you and the guys occupied for years, or do you intent to work in a diffent direction (SAN, networkFS, databases, etc.)?

    (or perhaps you'll just retire to Portugal and play lots and lots of golf)

  • Starting Large Free Software Projects (Score:5, Interesting)

    by unsinged int ( 561600 ) on Monday June 09, 2003 @11:57AM (#6151029)
    When you began a file system project as a free software project, you must have known that (assuming it worked) it had the potential to turn into a big project. How did you determine how long to work on it as your own project before making the first release? I imagine there must have been a strong temptation to just get it "out there" knowing its potential, yet certainly releasing too soon would make it look unprofessional and thrown together.

  • Naming (Score:2, Interesting)

    by sporty ( 27564 )
    Obviously, you named ReiserFS after yourself. Why after yourself? Were there any runner-ups? What will happen when you create another great project? :)
    • From my understanding of what happened, Hans Reiser has had some legal problems trying to prove ownership of a particular group of source code that he was involved with. Keep in mind that he is having to deal with intellectual property issues in both Russia and America. Not an easy task as they are two very different legal climates.

      I wish I had a couple of moderator points right now, because this is a really interesting question that has a much bigger answer than a simple egotistical reply. It is a stor

    • Re:Naming (Score:3, Informative)

      by uhoreg ( 583723 )
      The information doesn't seem to be in the current kernel, but in an older patch [216.239.37.100] (search for treefs):

      Two other former employees were involved who won't be getting credit here because they tried to kill the project at the end of it, and almost succeeded (they cost me maybe two years). They wanted to force me to sell it to the company they tried to start. They get to keep the money they got from me, and that is it. When their "VC" said that he could get a hundred researchers to swear in Russian Court that I

  • Raising Awareness (Score:5, Interesting)

    by blinder ( 153117 ) <[blinder.dave] [at] [gmail.com]> on Monday June 09, 2003 @12:04PM (#6151104) Homepage Journal
    One question I always have with regards to successful (meaning funded, wide acceptance, large user/developer community etc.) is how did you raise the awareness of your project to get it from just a side project to something that it is today?

    Did you use traditional PR techinques, or just through a community of connections?

  • OpenBSD (Score:3, Interesting)

    by chrysalis ( 50680 ) on Monday June 09, 2003 @12:04PM (#6151108) Homepage
    Is there any effort to port ReiserFS to *BSD systems?

  • A simple and obvious question. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by @madeus ( 24818 ) <slashdot_24818@mac.com> on Monday June 09, 2003 @12:04PM (#6151114)
    Apologies in advanced for a simplistic and obvious question but...

    What's the best way to get funding for a project, assuming the project is at some sort of usable prototype stage already (i.e. who should you approach, what ground work should be done)? How should one court potential sponsors? Is it better to wait for them to come to you, or should you present a formal funding request in a format similar to that of a traditional business plan?

  • Trade offs (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 09, 2003 @12:09PM (#6151166)
    From what I have understood of file systems, data safety is priority number one. Considering that, are there any super speed algorithms you have dismissed because of "unsafe" behaviours?

  • ReiserFS 4 vs. MS "SQL-FS" (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Kernel Corndog ( 155153 ) on Monday June 09, 2003 @12:13PM (#6151219)
    On the ReiserFS 4 page [namesys.com] you say that the new filesystem uses algorithms allowing the FS to do transactions only databases could do previously. Do you envision ReiserFS 4 being something comparable to MS' "SQL-FS" plans [com.com] in Longhorn? How would ReiserFS 4 affect regular (oracle, postresql, mysql) database projects/companies?

  • Extended Attributes on Unix (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 09, 2003 @12:16PM (#6151263)
    Clearly Unix filesystems are moving in the direction of extended attributes. This isn't necessarily a smooth transition for Unix, where many utilities are modeled after streams of bytes.

    I personally have pondered about this a lot. What do you think needs to be adapted and why? Should the VFS be changed? Should traditional Unix tools like "cat" be adapted somehow, or given attribute-aware equivalents? Should file attributes be accessable at the file descriptor level? Will we need a new "tar"? What should be done to standardize these attributes, or make them compatible across filesystems?

  • Unix filesystem layout (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Erik Hensema ( 12898 ) on Monday June 09, 2003 @12:18PM (#6151276) Homepage

    The directory layout of the typical unix filesystem has grown over the years to what has become the FHS 2.0.

    If you were in the position of designing an entirely new FHS, more suited to ReiserFS (lots of small files, database-like access, etc) and without backward compatibility, what would it look like?

  • Rules of thumb (Score:5, Interesting)

    by realnowhereman ( 263389 ) <andyparkins@nOsPam.gmail.com> on Monday June 09, 2003 @12:22PM (#6151307)
    In your future visions paper [namesys.com] early on you talk about Reiser's Rule of Thumb #2. However, I can't find Reiser's Rule of Thumb #1 -- what is it? Is it a secret? Does it contain the sum of all human knowledge?

    TELL ME!

  • Bad block handling! (Score:2, Interesting)

    by gilesjuk ( 604902 )
    How about adding better methods for repairing partitions with bad blocks?

    I lost three partitions of data that were formatted with ReiserFS and I was unable to repair them. Creating an image of a partition is simply unacceptable IMHO as part of a data recovery process, suppose you have 600GB of data?

  • As a newbie (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Alkivar ( 25833 ) on Monday June 09, 2003 @12:30PM (#6151378) Homepage
    this question is aimed at satisfying the linux newbie.

    What features do you feel are most important/would convince a newbie to make ReiserFS the system to use as compared to the many other alternatives (XFS,EXT3,etc...) out there?

  • Deadlocking? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by IamTheRealMike ( 537420 ) on Monday June 09, 2003 @12:43PM (#6151515)
    I've spoken to a few people (not naming names) who appear convinced that the design of ReiserFS is fundamentally flawed, and that it would lead to inevitable deadlocking. I've read your white papers now several times (took me a while to figure them out), and think the work you're doing is great, but a few smart people seem to think it can't be trusted. How would you reassure those people that their data is safe?

  • fighting the wrong battle? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Capablanca ( 100250 ) on Monday June 09, 2003 @12:47PM (#6151538)
    the redmond hegemony lost the internet protocol battle and decided to fight back with semantically rich but proprietary file systems (think 'halloween memo', 'longhorn', 'groove'). are you thinking about how to mutate ReiserFS to support arbitrary object attributes, full-text indexing, callbacks, namespace syntax for queries, etc?
  • Mr. Reiser, first off I have no complaints about ReiserFS (which is a high compliment), I use it on almost all my machines, except a couple are running EXT3 because they're not heavily used and I'm lazy at times. But thats neither here nor there.

    You fall into an interesting subcategory of project managers or whatever you want to call them. I'll call it the "outspoken genius" category (even though the first word might be understated and the last is probably hyperbole). Basicly your work is technically interesting, applicable, etc. That's a give in. But there are quite a few people who have personal issues with you and your manner and usually cite some exchange or another. Sometimes this is the basis of an argument to reject the use of your work, which I think is somewhat silly. You're not the only one, and certainly not the first to be interviewed here.

    So what do you think about this? ie. Do you think you made interpersonal mistakes that landed you here or do you think you've been misunderstood? Does it bother you? Why do you think people enjoy egging on folks such as yourself and then citing the moment you get annoyed with them? Do you think this question ever has a prayer of being moderated higher than someone following the method of the previous question?

    Jeeze, I realize I just wrote an essay question in the style of one of my old Philosophy professors. You know the kind, here's a statement now write some stuff (I guess I'll give you a few ideas of where to go).
  • and avoid questions that can be answered with a few minutes' worth of research

    That's awful big talk from a /. editor...

  • How did you get the funding (Score:3, Interesting)

    by josevnz ( 647715 ) on Monday June 09, 2003 @01:09PM (#6151821) Journal
    I was wondering how complicated is to get funding for an Open Source project from big companies like IBM, SuSe or even RedHat. I mean, probably you have to create a "business plan" kind of document to explain why someone should invest money on your project, but what important things should be included as a part of such proposal? (or this is just a matter of have a proper "networking").

    Also, do you known if there is any company that dedicates itself to help Open Source projects, besides de FSF?

    Thanks in advance :)

  • Distributed Filesystems (Score:3, Interesting)

    by LarryRiedel ( 141315 ) on Monday June 09, 2003 @01:23PM (#6151956)

    Filesystems like Coda and InterMezzo, network RAID applications like ENBD/FR1 and DRBD, and filesystem synchronizers like Unison provide some partial solutions for the need to have a distributed filesystem with replication and disconnected operation. Do you think Reiser4 or its successor will provide features which make it easier to implement a robust usable distributed filesystem?

  • version control in ReiserFS? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Maimun ( 631984 ) on Monday June 09, 2003 @01:37PM (#6152107)
    Hans,

    I recall a discussion at lkml about the licensing issues with bitkeeper. Someone said that the future versions of your FS will have some version control built-in, and thus be a sort-of competitor to Larry McVoy's bitkeeper. Larry's comment was that if that happens, then you have to buy bk in order to use it. [google.ca]

    You suggested that indeed version control is going to be in. [google.ca] Can you say more about these plans now, and the eventual conflict with bitkeeper.

    Thanks.

  • Researching filesystems (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ProteusQ ( 665382 ) * <dontbother@nowher[ ]om ['e.c' in gap]> on Monday June 09, 2003 @01:50PM (#6152271) Journal
    I'm going back to school this fall, and in a year I hope to be admitted into a Masters of Computer Science program. I'd like my main research focus to be on filesystems.

    I'm preparing by reading everything I can find: I'm working on Tanenbaum & Woodhull's "OS Design & Implementation"; I've read "Design and Implementation of the Second Extended Filesystem"; Steve Pate's "UNIX Filesystems" is waiting on my shelf; and of course, there's the FAQ and ReiserFS v.3 Whitepaper at www.namesys.com [namesys.com].

    Specific questions: what branches of math are useful in this line of research? Any books, articles, etc., that I haven't listed that are a 'must read' or 'should read'? Those who have succeeded in building a better filesystem: what have they done that I should also do? Any mistakes I should avoid? Anything that no one told you about filesystems that you wish you had known up front? And are there any special tricks (above and beyond mastering your subject) to getting hired in this field once a degree is in hand?

    Thanks!

  • Features vs. reliability (Score:3, Interesting)

    by halfelven ( 207781 ) on Monday June 09, 2003 @02:03PM (#6152390)
    ReiserFS has got a large amount of features in a short time. Also, new features are added regularly, and new, massively changed releases were issued several times. There were concerns regarding how this could affect the reliability of your filesystem. What's your take on that?

  • One very very important question. (Score:3, Informative)

    by jd ( 1658 ) <imipak@ y a hoo.com> on Monday June 09, 2003 @02:31PM (#6152674) Homepage Journal
    There are now a HUGE number of filesystems out there for Linux. To make the question make sense, I'll need to list a bunch.

    Non-Journalled, or Unsure:

    • Ext2 (Bronze-age tech. Better than stone-age FAT, neolithic VFAT or iron-age UnixWare)
    • v9fs (Plan 9 meets Linux, popular with nuke scientists)
    • Befs (Mmmmm.... Be-fy!)
    • NTFS (Can't write safely, then can't use much)
    • UFS (Same as above)
    • ISO9660 (If the image hasn't been burned, then you might as well make it read/write)

    Journalled:

    • Ext3FS (the XT-architecture of filesystems)
    • XFS (Very fast, but incompatible facilities)
    • JFS (The development is sloooow)
    • LogFS (abandonware, but fully-logging if anyone actually finished it!)
    • ReiserFS (Really nice, and an innovative use of B*-trees!)

    Network file-systems

    • Intermezzo (unreliable)
    • CODA (unreliable)
    • Novell Netware (reliable but ancient)
    • NFS (reliable but stupid)
    • CIFS (as reliable as Microsoft specs get)
    • Lustre (used by Linux supercomputers)

      To summarize: We have a horribly-large number of filesystems, most of which are incompatiable, many of which do not support the Linux security module extensions, one (e2fs) provides defragging under Linux, and none at all provide support for conversions.

      Hey, diversity is good! I -like- diversity! I want MORE diviersity! I also want ways to efficiently move data around.

      Will future versions of ReiserFS include additional userland tools for defrag, fs conversion, scope of logging (eg: none, meta, full), pluggable hashing algorithm, etc?

      Ultimately, all the choice in the world is no choice at all if there's no way to make use of those choices.

  • Supporting applications (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ttfkam ( 37064 ) on Monday June 09, 2003 @02:39PM (#6152787) Homepage Journal
    Having seen the BeOS development APIs, Reiser4 strikes a familiar cord with its metadata handling and querying. However, while BeOS had a captive audience (there were no BeOS clones/work-alikes), you are making ReiserFS a part of an established operating system and all of the inertia that "establishment" brings with it.

    Where BeOS failed (among other reasons) because of the perceived lack of applications, do you have any thoughts on how to seed development for ReiserFS.

    Case in point, where in other filesystem setups you would have a mail spool and/or mailbox as a custom file format (and indexes) on top of the filesystem, Resier4 allows for custom queryable file attributes (metadata) and the ability to efficiently store each message in the queue as a separate file. The mail handling program becomes proportionally less complex as that complexity has been shifted toward the common filesystem layer.

    That said -- mostly for the sake of folks that haven't been following Reiser4 development -- do you see a way of encouraging Reiser4-aware programs? After all, it's a chicken and egg issue. Without common usage of Reiser4, application developers will be less inclined to commit their time to it (perhaps?). Without applications that take advantage of its unique features, what reason does the user have to put it on their workstation or server?

    Are we looking at custom Linux distributions with this in mind or just piecemeal applications? Personally, I'm looking forward to dropping Ogg Vorbis files into a directory and, through the use of plugins, having their ID3 info automatically searchable. Hmmm... Where was that Fugees song again?

  • Performance metrics (Score:4, Interesting)

    by ttfkam ( 37064 ) on Monday June 09, 2003 @02:43PM (#6152842) Homepage Journal
    Do you have any updated performance metrics for reiser4 in comparison to ext3, xfs, jfs, and reiser3?

    I'd be curious to see both small file test, large file tests, and a mixture -- as is the case for websites with movies where the HTML and graphics are 3K but the media files are 50MB and up.

  • Location (Score:3, Interesting)

    by 21mhz ( 443080 ) on Monday June 09, 2003 @03:28PM (#6153374) Journal
    How is/was your business in Moscow?

  • reiserfs fud (Score:5, Interesting)

    by bani ( 467531 ) on Monday June 09, 2003 @03:32PM (#6153433)
    There seems to be a lot of FUD against reiserfs being spread by a small but vocal minority of people.

    Among other claims I have heard by the FUDsters - 'no large production systems (eg terabyte or larger) trust their data to reiserfs', 'xfs is superior to reiserfs because it has been well tested on irix', 'reiserfs has chronic data corruption problems', etc. Spin tactics that would make microsoft's propaganda teams proud.

    How do you respond to the FUDsters? What claims are bogus, and what valid objections to reiserfs are there? (The only legitimate problem I can think of - lack of full data journaling - is shared by xfs and jfs as well).

    There also seems to be a resistance by commercial distros to adopting reiserfs.

    What do you attribute the resistance to?

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