Ext 4 dicussion

Hey guys,

Anyone tried etx4 yet? I'm downloading Ubuntu 9.04 right now... I'll tell you how it goes...

Some people had issues with GRUB and ext4 so they used ext3 for /boot. I haven't been able to test it myself.

I dunno... but it seems a tad faster...

Can't se any reason why it wouldn't be, except disk performance will be lower than on a native installation (it's still on an NTFS partition). It all depends what hardware you "gave" it.

No, I'm keeping EXT3 for the rest of this year.

Doing what? How did you measure it??

Can you guys vacuum down here and turn some lights on please?

It's pretty dusty and there is a bad echo.

heh heh heh ....

/runs

Actually I have a Linux firewall here ... Smoothwall.

I had IPCOP before.

I just had to get my Penguin mate Craig in to do the fiddly bits to get it going.

Linux doesn't often break like WinDoze.

The kernel can be patched without rebooting, so patching isn't incompatible with long uptimes.

I was actually thinking of KSplice. Not perfect, but could save a lot of reboots. I think for a truly no downtime situation you have to run mirrored or clustered servers. That's what I did when we wanted 100% uptime on a Citrix installation.

They've not restarted our main windows db server in 6 months, and when they did it was only due to our sw needing it to complete the install. The Sun box on the other hand has been restarted 6 times in the last two weeks. Go figure?

Much to the disgust of an old workmate and then house mate I once threw a Solbourne dual proc spark workstation from a second floor window into a skip during a clear out of the comms room. Whilst the case suffered he did get it to post when he dragged it out from under the two generic servers I threw on top of it later that day. Shame he never managed to get an OS on it (it was a STRANGE beast) but it did make a coffee table in the house for a while.

Had some corruption with Ext4, but i believed this is fixed now. Still i think it was integrated too early in Ubuntu and 9.10 making it default sure isn't the safest choice i've seen from the debian keeping-you-in-the-stoneage mentality. So some raised eyebrows here.

But generally i like ext4 alot better than ext3. That said ext3 just sucks, XFS, JFS, ReiserFS, mostly any FS is better than Ext3. And ext3 has some serious issues with maintenance and reliability; i consider it comparable to FAT of earlier Windows 98 age. Sure its (light) journaling, but it has many weaknesses and relies on checking the volume for errors rather than being a self-healing filesystem.

Isn't the problem with ZFS on Linux that it is proprietory? Works a treat on FreeBSD.

yeah ZFS is not license compatible with linux so the only way to get it to work is through fuse which makes it not worth the time

though you could try BtrFS (unstable at the moment). It's suppose to have ZFS like functionality

very true, definitely not for prime time yet, though a ZFS like native file system would be very nice on linux

I had some problems with an ext4 partition on a reinstall: a fix had made it into an updated kernel and reverting to the original one made a mess of it.

Personally, I'll stay on ext3 until btrfs becomes stable. One 'experimental' FS in use at once, KTHXBY.

Yeah, that too - but then in order to really test a FS you need to use it, and thus you'll backup your sensitive data anyway - might as well do so on a live, spare system then.

Still, that's a good idea.

Its all Oracle's fault.

Though maybe Neelie Kroes can save us, because she still has to authorize the acquisition of Sun Microsystems by Oracle. Oracle is a very .. destructive company, and has destroyed alot of potentially sound technology in the past.