best FS for gentoo

[jesus12345]

what are your opinions on what the best FS is for gentoo?

[jesus12345]

whoops looks like i put it in the wrong forum, :o

[Hayl]

a filesystem isn't best based on what distro you are running. in fact, filesystems have nothing to do with distros.

also, there is no best. this is a purely subjective question and people have different resons for using different filesystems.

<moved to /dev/random>

[nextbillgates]

Quick rundown of filesystems:

ext2 - Classic Linux file system. Deprecated.
Pros: Universally compatible
Cons: Lacks journal capability

ext3 - Classic Linux file system with journaling support.
Pros: Universally compatible, reliable
Cons: Slow

reiserfs - High performance journaling file system
Pros: Very fast, particularly involving smaller files
Cons: Hardware lockups can possibly cause file corruption

xfs - High performance journaling file system
Pros: Very fast, particularly involving very large (multi-GB) files
Cons: Possible file system corruption if not properly unmounted, compatible only with the newest distros.

jfs - n/a
I don't have any personal experience with JFS, and don't know of anyone who has. I'd avoid it until it becomes more mature.

For what it's worth, Gentoo's documentation recommends reiserfs for workstations.

[DerekKraan]

Just thought I would mention that the new Reiser4 filesystem is an atomic filesystem. That means that it won't corrupt itself if not properly unmounted(if I'm wrong, please correct me).

[ZAmodeo]

nextbillgates: nice post! I'll be using that as a reference from now on :)

[nextbillgates]

Originally posted by ZAmodeo
nextbillgates: nice post! I'll be using that as a reference from now on :)

If you're going to use it as a reference, here's my own recommendations.

I recommend reiserfs for personal desktops and servers where data integrity is not critical and where speed benefits would be obvious. Examples of such servers would be an rsync server or a squid proxy cache. I don't recommend for mission critical servers because a) there is a chance of minor data corruption, and far more important, b) fsck.reiserfs doesn't always pick up corruption. Data corruption in itself isn't that bad, because one can always restore from backups, but data corruption with no indication that it has become corrupted would be disastrous.

I would only recommend XFS for rock-solid enteprise-level servers connected to UPSs or SANs. XFS has many advantages over competing file systems at the enterprise level (such as ACLs), but the high risk of file system corruption if unproperly mounted makes it unsuitable for desktops.

ext3 is a safe choice. It's not particularly fast or secure, but it journals both data and metadata, which leaves less chance for data corruption.

I use reiserfs on workstations and embedded machines, and ext3 on servers.