linux-kernel - Re: Reiser4. BEST FILESYSTEM EVER.

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Date:	Sun, 08 Apr 2007 14:18:00 -0400
From:	Jeff Mahoney <jeffm@...e.com>
To:	Theodore Tso <tytso@....edu>, johnrobertbanks@...tmail.fm,
	Lennart Sorensen <lsorense@...lub.uwaterloo.ca>,
	"H. Peter Anvin" <hpa@...or.com>, Ignatich <ignatich@...il.com>,
	reiserfs-list@...esys.com, linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org,
	linux-fsdevel@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: Reiser4. BEST FILESYSTEM EVER.

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Theodore Tso wrote:
> The reason why I ignore the tar+gzip tests is that in the past Hans
> has rigged the test by using a tar ball which was generated by
> unpacking a set of kernel sources on a reiser4 filesystem, and then
> repacking them using tar+gzip.  The result was a tar file whose files
> were optimally laid out so that reiser4 could insert them into the
> filesystem b-tree without doing any extra work.
> 
> I can't say for sure whether or not this set of benchmarks has done
> this (there's not enough information describing the benchmark setup),
> but the sad fact of the matter is that people trying to pitch Reiser4
> have generated for themselves a reputation for using rigged
> benchmarks.  Hans's used of a carefully stacked and ordered tar file
> (which is the same as stacking a deck of cards), and your repeated use
> of the bonnee++ benchmarks despite being told that it is a meaningless
> result given the fact that well, zero's compress very well and most
> people are interested in storing a file of all zeros, has caused me to
> look at any benchmarks cited by Reiser4 partisans with a very
> jaundiced and skeptical eye.
> 
> Fortunately for you, it's not up to me whether or not Reiser4 makes it
> into the kernel.  And if it works for you, hey, go wild.  You can
> always patch it into your own kernel and encourage others to do the
> same with respect to getting it tested and adopted.  My personal take
> on it is that Reiser3, Reiser4 and JFS suffer the same problems, which
> is to say they have a very small and limited development community,
> and this was referenced in Novell's decision to drop Reiser3:
> 
> http://linux.wordpress.com/2006/09/27/suse-102-ditching-reiserfs-as-it-default-fs/
> 
> SuSE has deprecated Reiser3 *and* JFS, and I believe quite strongly it
> is the failure of the organizations to attract a diverse development
> community is ultimately what doomed them in the long term, both in
> terms of support as the kernel migrated and new feature support.  It
> is for that reason that Hans' personality traits that tend to drive
> away those developers who would help them, beyond those that he hires,
> is what has been so self-destructive to Reiser4.  Read the
> announcement Jeff Mahoney from SUSE Labs again; he pointed out was
> that reiser3 was getting dropped even though it performs better than
> ext3 in some scenarios.  There are many other considerations, such as
> a filesystem's robustness in case on-disk corruption, long term
> maintenance as the kernel maintains, availability of developers to
> provide bug fixes, how well the system performs on systems with
> multiple cores/CPU's, etc.

Those are all arguments I've made and still stand by, but I should
address one point that has been repeated fairly often. Novell _isn't_
dropping support for Reiser3 in any of our products. The change only
refers to the choice of a default file system. Most users don't care
about which file system they use, and those that do are still free to
choose reiser3 if they want it. We'll support it and I still have
patches under development to improve it.

- -Jeff

- --
Jeff Mahoney
SUSE Labs
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