IBM Baking Some Nice Optimizations To EXT4's Multi-Block Allocator

[evil_core]

We used reiserfs (3) for many years on mission critical server hardware. It was really solid and outperformed every other FS in its days when many small files were to be stored. The "tail packing" feature of reiserfs is something I miss to this day in other filesystems. So sad the author turned into a criminal... could have really made a big dent in filesystem history.

OpenZFS also does tails packing when any compression is enabled.

[smitty3268]

Wait, someone was actually using ReiserFS? That's a first!

I also used Reiser 3.

Back then most distros defaulted to EXT3, but it wasn't really that popular of a choice. A lot of people recommended either Reiser3 or XFS instead, with Reiser being more of the desktop PC option and XFS coming from the server side.

When EXT4 came out it caught up with a lot of the benefits the other FS's had, and most people switched to it and haven't really looked back since. It was Reiser 4 that never caught on.

[dwagner]

Wait, someone was actually using ReiserFS? That's a first!

We used reiserfs (3) for many years on mission critical server hardware. It was really solid and outperformed every other FS in its days when many small files were to be stored. The "tail packing" feature of reiserfs is something I miss to this day in other filesystems. So sad the author turned into a criminal... could have really made a big dent in filesystem history.

[kcrudup]

2653237918_12d75084a0_o.png I'd heard good things about ReiserFS as well.

... then there's this handy comparison chart!

[NobodyXu]

this is new stuff... we're talking about early 2000s! 😅

Oh right, I lost the context.

[cynic]

Yes, that's true, but with zswap or zram I think this is less of a problem since they can be compressed.
They can also be swapped out if needed.

this is new stuff... we're talking about early 2000s! 😅

[NobodyXu]

yes, it had, but sometimes you need a large /tmp and RAM was a scarce resource (I'm not the original poster, but maybe he had the same constraints).

Yes, that's true, but with zswap or zram I think this is less of a problem since they can be compressed.
They can also be swapped out if needed.

[cynic]

stormcrow Why would you use Reiserfs for /tmp?
Does Linux not have tmpfs back then?

yes, it had, but sometimes you need a large /tmp and RAM was a scarce resource (I'm not the original poster, but maybe he had the same constraints).

[NobodyXu]

this look great, which filesystem perform well with small files ?

Tmpfs, it has the best performance LOL

Just joking, while tmpfs is indeed a filesystem it cannot persist your data.

[cynic]

this look great, which filesystem perform well with small files ?

btrfs