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Data Storage Software

Rewritten ReiserFS 4 Promises 2-5x Speed Increase 82

Posted by timothy from the mounting-tension dept.
An anonymous reader reports that version 4 of "ReiserFS will be released in first quarter. Complete rewrite will support Atomic writing. 2-5 times faster. File corruption will be a thing of the past. Lindows.com is paying for part of it."
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Rewritten ReiserFS 4 Promises 2-5x Speed Increase More

Rewritten ReiserFS 4 Promises 2-5x Speed Increase

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  • I'm now using ReiserFS 3 on most of my home systems and I must say it works quite well. Haven't had any problems so far with any of them so a version that's 50% faster sounds very good to be.

    Too bad not all distros offer it during the installation.

    • Re:Can't wait. (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 30, 2003 @11:47PM (#7842722)
      Distros don't offer it during installation for a few usual reasons:

      1) no mainline kernel acceptance

      2) known data corruption issues

      3) Hans Reiser himself has said they're beta and not quite production yet, but will be soon

      • Version 3 (Score:1, Flamebait)

        by jovlinger ( 55075 )
        ... and they still have data corruption?

        Ouch!

        I dunno how much I'll be able to trust this filesystem in the future.

        • Re:Version 3 (Score:3, Informative)

          by zurab ( 188064 )

          ... and they still have data corruption?

          Ouch!

          I dunno how much I'll be able to trust this filesystem in the future.

          Yeah, probably a little more than an AC post on /., only if ReiserFS users like mp3.com (when it operated) and SourceForge.net don't say anything.

          Personally, I've used ReiserFS exclusively since it first became available (and supported) with SuSE, which was few years ago, and I haven't experienced any problems with it. In fact, I was able to successfully save my data even when my IBM DeskSt

    • Re:Can't wait. (Score:3, Interesting)

      by JDWTopGuy ( 209256 )
      Agreed. I use reiserfs on all my Slackware boxen, have for a while now. (Slackware does offer reiserfs during install.)

      So will reiserfs 4 require a 2.6 kernel, or will those of us using 2.4 be able to use it? Also, does it require a re-format, or can you upgrade a v3 FS to v4?

      • If the history of ReiserFS is anything to go by, then backwards compatibility with previous ReiserFS filesystem is not a reasonable expectation. It will have a new block-level format, will not work with old format filesystems, and it will probably horribly corrupt your existing ReiserFS filesystems if you try to use it with new ReiserFS4 filesystems. If it claims backwards compatibility it will do what I have just stated anyway. The worst problems will occur when new and old format partitions are used si

    • Too bad not all distros offer it during the "installation."

      RedHat 9 provides it as an option during installation. When you pop in disk 1 you get the main install screen. Type "linux reiserfs" then hit enter. When Disk Druid comes up, select each disk partition and change it from ext3 to reiserfs. I have several RedHat 9 systems running @ home and work. Very stable so far.

  • Good job to Lindows (Score:3, Insightful)

    by JonnyRo88 ( 639703 ) on Tuesday December 30, 2003 @11:47PM (#7842715) Homepage Journal
    I cant say I would ever run Lindows, but it definately raises my impression of them that they are continuing to support reiserfs.

    This is an example of how a corporation can benifit from OSS and share that benifit by contributing back to OSS developers.

  • More info (Score:5, Informative)

    by ttfkam ( 37064 ) on Tuesday December 30, 2003 @11:59PM (#7842788) Homepage Journal
    A link to the main project page [namesys.com] can give more info.

    Or if that is too much to digest, I wrote a fairly easy to follow summary on kuro5hin [kuro5hin.org].

  • Good Show, Lindows! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by TheWanderingHermit ( 513872 ) on Wednesday December 31, 2003 @12:36AM (#7843004)
    I'm glad to see this. I remember when Lindows was announced, the general reaction here was, "Why create something to emulate Windows?" and there was a level of contempt here because it was so easy to use (as there always is here -- almost like a reaction of people insecure with their own status).

    They're also sponsoring a project involving KDE (forgot exactly what) and NVu (a full WYSIWYG HTML/Site editor based on Mozilla for Linux). Lindows is an excellent example of good citizenship in the FLOSS world. It's true they are a pay-for-only distro, but they are definitely giving back to the community -- in ways the community needs and other people/companies are not supporting.
    • here was a level of contempt here because it was so easy to use (as there always is here -- almost like a reaction of people insecure with their own status).

      I think the contempt was mostly due to the fact that lindows runs as root, all the time -- a stupid move, security-wise.
      • No stupider than Win 9x... ...er, well, let's just say there are other OS's out there that are even less secure.
        • So whats your point? Because a 6 year old Microsoft OS was worse its ok for them to be? Besides imagine the bad press Linux will get when someone blows a Lindows box wide upen. Do you expect average users and CEOs to understand that its insecure because its poorly designed?
      • I think the contempt was mostly due to the fact that lindows runs as root, all the time

        Apparently you haven't installed Lindows recently.

        • Apparently you haven't installed Lindows recently.

          Nope, I've never seen a running Lindows install.

          All I know about lindows, aside from what I've heard, is that the artwork on their box is slicker than the art on the Mandrake 9.2 box... :)
          • Actually LindowsOS has come a long way in the two years I've been an Insider. I love it! I have been looking at other distros as well including Suse, Knoppix, Lycoris and RedHat (Fedora) and I keep reinstalling LindowsOS. Version 4.0 is very very good. And no, you do NOT have to run as root. When you install it, it gives you the option to add users and you can then sign in just like the rest. The modified KDE is much cleaner than any of the others. That's one very nice benefit.

            CNR also works better than a

            • Re:Good Show, Lindows! (Score:3, Insightful)

              by Feztaa ( 633745 )
              Make sure you guys try LindowsOS before you knock it. It's really getting good!!!

              Ok, fine, I agree to stop knocking lindows until I try it. I started knocking lindows based on information I picked up on slashdot, it's only fair that slashdot can correct me :)
  • ...so much so that I'm going to call my daughter Reiser. Sounds nice don't you think?
  • Does anyone have a good compare and contrast of ReiserFS 4 and WinFS? Looks like there are some similarites in functionality.
    • For a quick explanation, WinFS is a FS on top of SQL Server (a dbms). It will allow stored procedures to be invoked, just like a dbms and is now updatedable remotely.

      ReiserFS is still a journalFS that is similar in nature to an Apple fork (ability to store keyword/values for attributes). It has procuderes that can be invoked based on read, write, readdir, writedir, open, and close. Security is still handled normal, so only those with permission can change the functions.

      • Re:ReiserFS 4 vs WinFS (Score:3, Insightful)

        by ENOENT ( 25325 )
        Stored procedures in your filesystem? Um. Yeah, I trust Microsoft to make this secure and reliable.

        I do.

        Really.

        OK, I'm lying.

        It's nice to see that Microsoft is planning to support a whole new class of viruses.

        • Stored procedures in your filesystem? Um. Yeah, I trust Microsoft to make this secure and reliable.

          My first inclination is to agree with you. But the real problem with MS is their underlieing desigin was a disaster since NT 4 (3.x was actually ok).
          Now, MS is postponing a release and is actually putting real effort into doing things right (or so they say). Iff design was given to the right person AND iff that person was able to do the job without political interruptions (similar to how Cutler did the orig
        • New viruses that only delete the most important files on WinFS formatted drives are proliferating at blinding speed.

          Bill Gates was quoted as saying, "We are aware of this issue and have added it to the list of features we are including on the backs of the Longhorn(tm) boxes."

    • What I'd like to see is a comparison of ReiserFS vs. WinFS vs BeFS.

      Everything I read about WinFS sounds like a blatant rip-off of BeFS (The BeOS's filesystem)'s featureset.

      BeFS was database-driven and had all kinds of great querying features, could support files of over a petabyte (I forget exactly how big that is), had fixed-size blocks rather than a fixed-count, and I believe it was journaled, too. That was back, when? 1995? 1996?

      I bet M$ is glad Be went down, now they don't have to worry about infring

      • BFS did not start the filesystem-on-top-of-a-database idea. The Inversion file system did this on top of postgres at least ten years ago. That's not to say that BFS didn't do anything creative or do anything less than a fine job, but if you're going to call WinFS
        a blatant rip-off of BeFS
        you'd better call BSF a blatant ripoff of Inversion.
    • Does anyone have a good compare and contrast of ReiserFS 4 and WinFS?

      WinFS is not a filesystem, it's a database layer that sits on top of NTFS.

  • You had me worried there... (Score:4, Funny)

    by pwagland ( 472537 ) on Wednesday December 31, 2003 @05:03AM (#7843827) Journal
    When I first read it I missed the "."s and read it as:

    Complete rewrite will support Atomic writing, 2-5 times faster File corruption

    Eek! Thankfully on re-reading, I saw that "Complete rewrite will support Atomic writing *and* 2-5 times faster *and* File corruption will be a thing of the past" :-)

  • File and filesystem corruption is never a thing of the past. You can mitigate their effects, but no amount of filesystem robustness will fully protect you against failing hardware. Please don't make false advertisements regarding F[L]OSS projects.
    • Well, of course you can't guard against hardware failure, but I think in the context of the announcement it was clear enough that the risk of buggy code corrupting the filesystem was reduced. Don't forget, Hans Reiser himself describes the code as beta.

      I use it here, though and have never had any problems. ext3 on the other hand, has mangled filesystems for me on several occasions.

  • The 'atomic update' quality is something MySQL and PostgreSQL can take advantage of, or in fact any lication that often writes small amounts of data and calls fsync/fdatasnc. And it shouldn't be terribly difficult to make the required changed. Kudos!

  • Major Deployments using Reiser? (Score:3, Funny)

    by globalar ( 669767 ) on Friday January 02, 2004 @12:37AM (#7857883) Homepage
    From the article:

    "We supported ReiserFS at MP3.com..." -Michael Robertson

    Are there other familiar places that use(d) ReiserFS?


    By the way, great tag at the bottom of the article:

    "Copyright (C) 2004 Lindows.com, Inc. All rights reserved.

    Lindows.com is not endorsed by or affiliated with Microsoft Corporation in any way - in fact, we don't even really like them because they are suing us. [lindows.com]

  • Did anyone read the article and follow the links? The benchmarks show that the speed improvement they site exists in only a very few cases. There's almost an equal number of cases where reiser4 is 2-3 times slower than reiser3.

    The real situation seems to be that R4 is marginally faster than R3 on the average. And before replying, try checking the data and see for yourself.

    • Yes, but it's a matter of the right tools for the right job. Some filesystems work well with large numbers of small files, some with small numbers of large files. If I were building a mailserver with Maildir mail directories, or a squid proxy server, I'd consider Reiser because of the large numbers of small, often-changed, files involved. Comparing like for like is very difficult these days because of the complexity of stuff.

  • ReiserFS Pro vs Con (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Pyro226 ( 715818 ) <Pyro226 @ h o t m ail.com> on Saturday January 03, 2004 @03:11AM (#7866049) Journal
    ReiserFS is good because it uses advanced algorithms and such that I will never understand to increase the speed at which harddrives (or usb solid state devices...) can read and write data at the cost of processor utilization. This is good because

    A) Processors have been increasing in speed much more quickly than hard-drives, so this tradeoff can lead to a more balanced system.

    B) Hard-drive read/write speeds can have a lot more impact on the speed of a computer than people realize. When large programs (Open Office, etc.) take a long time to load up it makes a computer seem slow, and the general mentality is that the solution to a slow computer is to get a faster processor. Sometimes when I'm booted in Windows XP i'll be running a lot of programs simultaniously and the computer will seriuously bog down, so I'll three finger salute and look at my running processes, only to find that my cpu is idle. I'll then look over to see my HD activity LED constantly lit.

    On the other hand, one of the Cons of using ReiserFS is that it eats up CPU cycles. It probably doesn't make sense to use it on an older (Pentium I/II) computer because the gain in Hard Drive speed will be overshadowed by the lost processor cycles, although 2.6's new kernel pre-empting code would probably help a lot with this problem.

    There are also reports of file corruption, so it might not be a good idea on a server that can't afford down time to restore a backup.
    • I'd like to see your evidence that it eats processor cycles.

      The only such claim I ever saw said that Reiser had a higher CPU utilization, in percentage terms. But that's just what happens when you spend less time on I/O.

      Imagine this benchmark scenario: Filesystem A takes 10 seconds and has 20% CPU usage. Filesystem B takes 2 seconds and has 90% cpu usage. Some would claim that Filesystem B is eating CPU cycles, but in fact it is consuming less processor time! (1.8 versus 2.0 CPU seconds.)

      IIRC, the

    • I happily used ReiserFS on a Dual PII 400 w/ kernel 2.6.0-test8 and couldn't see the speed difference between it and a Duron 900MHz rig.

  • reiserfs (Score:2, Insightful)

    by timmarhy ( 659436 )
    i use it on production machines, never had a problem. one of those machines it curently over 400 days uptime, and it does 10,000's of file copies everyday. most of my other machines are between 200 - 365 days up time as well, again never had a problem and this is on 2nd hand hardware. kind of speaks for itself really.

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