Alternatives after removal of ReiserFS

Alternatives after removal of ReiserFS

[Michał Dec]

Hello,

Does the Linux kernel actually offer any alternatives to users whose use 
cases are satisfied by ReiserFS? These users will probably be stuck with 
a much older kernel once ReiserFS is completely removed. I'm one of 
those users and I use ReiserFS to keep around large quantities of small 
files and quite ironically these are copies of the Linux kernel. I keep 
around 2, maybe 3 separate kernel trees to make sure the kernels I have 
on my devices can be rebuilt at any time.

Best regards,

Michał Dec

Re: Alternatives after removal of ReiserFS

[Oleksandr Natalenko]

Hello.

On středa 18. května 2022 14:10:25 CEST Michał Dec wrote:
> Does the Linux kernel actually offer any alternatives to users whose use 
> cases are satisfied by ReiserFS? These users will probably be stuck with 
> a much older kernel once ReiserFS is completely removed. I'm one of 
> those users and I use ReiserFS to keep around large quantities of small 
> files and quite ironically these are copies of the Linux kernel. I keep 
> around 2, maybe 3 separate kernel trees to make sure the kernels I have 
> on my devices can be rebuilt at any time.

I think the advantage of using reiserfs for small files faded away over time and became an old tale that is being passed from one generation to another without any modern adequate testing.

XFS should serve you well.

-- 
Oleksandr Natalenko (post-factum)

Re: Alternatives after removal of ReiserFS

[Jan Kara]

On Thu 19-05-22 11:20:24, Oleksandr Natalenko wrote:
> Hello.
> 
> On středa 18. května 2022 14:10:25 CEST Michał Dec wrote:
> > Does the Linux kernel actually offer any alternatives to users whose use 
> > cases are satisfied by ReiserFS? These users will probably be stuck with 
> > a much older kernel once ReiserFS is completely removed. I'm one of 
> > those users and I use ReiserFS to keep around large quantities of small 
> > files and quite ironically these are copies of the Linux kernel. I keep 
> > around 2, maybe 3 separate kernel trees to make sure the kernels I have 
> > on my devices can be rebuilt at any time.
> 
> I think the advantage of using reiserfs for small files faded away over
> time and became an old tale that is being passed from one generation to
> another without any modern adequate testing.
> 
> XFS should serve you well.

Yes, so the space savings of tail packing e.g. for the kernel tree are
likely still noticeable (my tree here has around half of the files with
size below 4k). But given how cheap the storage is these days, people don't
care as much. If space efficiency is important, it could be improved by using
1k blocksize for xfs or ext4. Also btrfs does packing of small files so
for lots of small files it may be more space-efficient. And btrfs also
supports transparent compression so that can reduce space usage for larger
files even further.

								Honza
-- 
Jan Kara <jack@suse.com>
SUSE Labs, CR

Re: Alternatives after removal of ReiserFS

[Michał Dec]

Hello Jan and Oleksandr,

I would prefer to avoid btrfs if possible. It ate my Gentoo root 
filesystem in 2017. This incident has been resolved by reinstalling the 
system because each attempt to fsck only made it even worse. I 
appreciate it for excellent transparent compression and for generally 
good support for Docker, but I can live without it.

 >But given how cheap the storage is these days, people don't care as much.

I don't like this kind of attitude because it encourages a decline in 
quality in general. We'll learn to appreciate what we have once it 
becomes scarce again.

Thank you Jan and Oleksandr very much for your knowledge on xfs and 
ext4. I'll make sure to put it to good use.

Bestest regards,

Michał Dec

W dniu 19.05.2022 o 12:16, Jan Kara pisze:
> On Thu 19-05-22 11:20:24, Oleksandr Natalenko wrote:
>> Hello.
>>
>> On středa 18. května 2022 14:10:25 CEST Michał Dec wrote:
>>> Does the Linux kernel actually offer any alternatives to users whose use
>>> cases are satisfied by ReiserFS? These users will probably be stuck with
>>> a much older kernel once ReiserFS is completely removed. I'm one of
>>> those users and I use ReiserFS to keep around large quantities of small
>>> files and quite ironically these are copies of the Linux kernel. I keep
>>> around 2, maybe 3 separate kernel trees to make sure the kernels I have
>>> on my devices can be rebuilt at any time.
>> I think the advantage of using reiserfs for small files faded away over
>> time and became an old tale that is being passed from one generation to
>> another without any modern adequate testing.
>>
>> XFS should serve you well.
> Yes, so the space savings of tail packing e.g. for the kernel tree are
> likely still noticeable (my tree here has around half of the files with
> size below 4k). But given how cheap the storage is these days, people don't
> care as much. If space efficiency is important, it could be improved by using
> 1k blocksize for xfs or ext4. Also btrfs does packing of small files so
> for lots of small files it may be more space-efficient. And btrfs also
> supports transparent compression so that can reduce space usage for larger
> files even further.
>
> 								Honza