[CentOS] ReiserFS

[Jed Reynolds]

centos at 911networks.com wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Is their any gotcha when using ResiserFs as a file system?
>   

You have to be careful with which OSes you use it with, for example, you 
can't really get a "base install" with ReiserFS, nor a default RescueCD 
with it...you'd want to choose a partition to dedicate for ReiserFS, and 
make sure you had among your DR tools a disk that has ReiserFS kernel 
module and tools.

ReiserFS is more CPU intensive, so using it on a lower-powered CPU will 
have more load. ReiserFS also is not a "robust" as extX file systems. So 
if you kick your  power cord out when someone sends you a killer joke, 
ReiserFS is more likely to lose data. Hearsay has it that it's harder to 
recover data from.

My opinion on when to use ReiserFS is under these conditions:
- stable server, backups and raid
- used on an appropriate volume, not all volumes
- you want conserve disk space because you're handling a large volume of 
files that are typically smaller than your  filesystem block size (for 
example, you'd lose a lot space in /var/spool/imap if your ext3 fs 
blocksize was 8K.
- you have DR utilities to cope

Jed