Bug 130716 – Handbook neglects to note slow startup with Reiserfs partitions

• Product: [OLD] Docs on www.gentoo.org
• Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

[Description Richard Donkin 2006-04-21 05:10:28 UTC]

Specifically chapter 4d:
With a few ReiserFS partitions my computer startup time is approximately tripled, due to the slow checking and mounting at startup. The filesystem is one thing that can't be changed easily after installation. The time will not be significant in cases where the computer is permanently running, but becomes very significant (and irritating) when there are frequent power failures (which occurs in many third world countries).
Perhaps the handbook could make a small mention of this, as something important to consider regarding the choice of filesystem. However, you should judge whether you have enough "customers" who frequently start up to warrant this.

[Comment 1 Richard Donkin 2006-04-21 05:18:57 UTC]

Sorry, I forgot to mention that I am referring to the AMD64 Installation Handbook.

[Comment 2 Shyam Mani (RETIRED) 2006-04-21 05:30:50 UTC]

AMD64 folks, can you confirm this?

Richard, I've always reiserfs (all partitions) with Gentoo since 2004 and have never noted marked difference in bootup times after a power-cut (yes, I see lots of those as well), so I'm inclined to mark this WORKSFORME.

Since I don't have an AMD64 box, I'm cc'ing the AMD64 folks for their input before taking further action on the bug.

Are you running reiser 4 by any chance?

[Comment 3 SpanKY 2006-04-21 07:14:40 UTC]

it isnt amd64 specific

reiserfs takes a few seconds longer to do a `mount` than ext3 ... and if you have more than one partition which you mount in serial, then you'd notice it pretty quickly

i tend to add to my local.start something like:
mount -F <mntone> <mnttwo> ... &

should work fine for all non-critical partitions (i.e. /var or /usr is a bad idea, but /mnt/foo is a good idea)

[Comment 4 nm (RETIRED) 2006-04-24 14:28:08 UTC]

(In reply to comment #0)
*shrug* So it can be slower -- so what? There have been plenty of benchmarks that show how the different filesystems do different things at different speeds.

In my opinion, this is not worth mentioning in the handbook. A few seconds of additional time (at most) does not merit any special attention.

[Comment 5 Xavier Neys (RETIRED) 2006-04-25 03:46:42 UTC]

(In reply to comment #4)
> In my opinion, this is not worth mentioning in the handbook. A few seconds of
> additional time (at most) does not merit any special attention.

Agreed.