Chapter 4 of the Gentoo handbook states: "ReiserFS is a B*-tree based filesystem that has very good overall performance and greatly outperforms both ext2 and ext3 when dealing with small files (files less than 4k), often by a factor of 10x-15x. ReiserFS also scales extremely well and has metadata journaling. As of kernel 2.4.18+, ReiserFS is solid and usable as both general-purpose filesystem and for extreme cases such as the creation of large filesystems, the use of many small files, very large files and directories containing tens of thousands of files." I'd say that that sounds pretty good and almost like a recommendation. However, when you emerge genkernel later on, you get lots of abusive comments about reiserfs and how crappy it is and if genkernel doesn't work it's all you own fault and that you better piss off and come back with a decent file system. I suggest that the handbook should at least mention the fact that reiserfs is *not* recommended if you are going to use genkernel later on (which should be the default for newbies).
Whatcha smokin', eh? http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/handbook-x86.xml?part=1&chap=7 No particular references to reiserfs; nor are they "abusive" -- newbies and veterans alike are welcome to combine reiserfs with genkernel. Heck, even the installation of genkernel is *not the default*; you're encouraged to use the manual config method. Either one works fine with reiserfs.
Im smoking cigarettes, thank you. Here's what the handbook says in chapter 7: Note that, if your boot partition doesn't use ext2 or ext3 as filesystem you might need to manually configure your kernel using genkernel --menuconfig all and add support for your filesystem in the kernel (i.e. not as a module). Users of EVMS2 or LVM2 will probably want to add --evms2 or --lvm2 as argument as well. And here's what genkernel says when emerged: This package is known to not work with reiser4. If you are running reiser4 and have a problem, do not file a bug. We know it does not work and we don't plan on fixing it since reiser4 is the one that is broken in this regard. Try using a sane filesystem like ext3 or even reiser3. If reiserfs is not the same thing as reiser4 than I'm sorry. But otherwise, I find those warnings highly particular. Don't get me wrong, I'm not reiser-fanboy. And whether you think those warnings are abusive or not is not the point. They are at least confusing, if what you say is correct.
(In reply to comment #2) > Im smoking cigarettes, thank you. It'll kill you and your family > If reiserfs is not the same thing as reiser4 than I'm sorry. But otherwise, I > find those warnings highly particular. Don't get me wrong, I'm not > reiser-fanboy. And whether you think those warnings are abusive or not is not > the point. They are at least confusing, if what you say is correct. FYI, reiserfs==reiser3, but 4 is only marginally more broken :) I do agree that the current description sounds too much like a recommendation.
(In reply to comment #2) > Here's what the handbook says in chapter 7: > Note that, if your boot partition doesn't use ext2 or ext3 as filesystem you > might need to manually configure your kernel using genkernel --menuconfig all > and add support for your filesystem in the kernel (i.e. not as a module). Users > of EVMS2 or LVM2 will probably want to add --evms2 or --lvm2 as argument as > well. > > And here's what genkernel says when emerged: > This package is known to not work with reiser4. If you are running > reiser4 and have a problem, do not file a bug. We know it does not > work and we don't plan on fixing it since reiser4 is the one that is > broken in this regard. Try using a sane filesystem like ext3 or > even reiser3. > > If reiserfs is not the same thing as reiser4 than I'm sorry. But otherwise, I > find those warnings highly particular. Don't get me wrong, I'm not > reiser-fanboy. And whether you think those warnings are abusive or not is not > the point. They are at least confusing, if what you say is correct. > There's still nothing *wrong* with the positive descriptions of the filesystems. ext3 was described in even more glowing terms before we had to change it for technical reasons. reiserfs is not reiser4; reiser4 is not a filesystem Gentoo supports. the fact that reiserfs, aka reiser3, does a better job handling portage syncs & so on is a good reason why we have listed some of its positive attributes. We do not have control over the content of ebuilds, for example warning messages and such. If you have issues with the genkernel ebuild, then you should file a separate bug against that package, since that's where the messages come from.
(In reply to comment #4) > There's still nothing *wrong* with the positive descriptions of the > filesystems. ext3 was described in even more glowing terms before we had to > change it for technical reasons. The only change in the FS descriptions since the hb*disk*xml were committed (Fri Apr 2 08:14:45 2004 UTC, 2 years, 6 months ago) is the ext3 dir_index option has been added. The ext3 desc is not glowing and it hasn't been toned down. > the fact that reiserfs, aka reiser3, does a better > job handling portage syncs & so on is a good reason why we have listed some of > its positive attributes. Nonsense.
All right, all right, I'll look into this...
Reworded descriptions of reiserfs and ext3 to be on par with each other. They both beat the pants off nonjournaled filesystems in *most* situations, anyway. :p Fixed in CVS. Again, though we have no control over ebuilds, so if you still have issues with what the genkernel ebuild says, file a bug against the Ebuilds component of the "Gentoo Linux" category, *not* against the documentation.
