Dear Sir or Ma'am: I am interested to think about implementing EXT3 onto my servers here. However, I have some concerns and am hoping someone can address them. 1) If I install ext3 what is the likelihood that the extent of damage caused by its bugs will be limited to just the fact that the journals may not work properly? Alternatively, do I risk real damage to files and the filesystem at this stage in its development? 2) Is there a projected period when you suspect it will be added to the Linus version of the kernel, and be available in all distributions (not just RH)? 3) Is there an ISO, which is inclusive of EXT3 so that I can boot it up in rescue mode and get to an EXT3 partition for repair purposes if, need be yet? I am not happy with ReiserFS as partition magic does not recognize its partition layout. I am waiting to implement EXT3 when it becomes available. Very Respectfully, Stuart Blake Tener, IT3, USNR-R, N3GWG Beverly Hills, California VTU 1904G (Volunteer Training Unit) stuart@bh90210.net west coast: (310)-358-0202 P.O. Box 16043, Beverly Hills, CA 90209-2043 east coast: (215)-338-6005 P.O. Box 45859, Philadelphia, PA 19149-5859 Telecopier: (419)-715-6073 fax to email gateway via www.efax.com (it's free!) JOIN THE US NAVY RESERVE, SERVE YOUR COUNTRY, AND BENEFIT FROM IT ALL. Wednesday, July 25, 2001 4:35 PM
If I was a little more anal I wouldn't be using it. I'm the type willing to accept a little risk for the added benefit. Andrew's working hard (he and I have been at it for a few weeks now) as one of my systems is a high-end box that really bangs the disk. I've had file system corruption, oopses when doing benchmarks, and poor multi-threaded performance. Fortunately it hasn't hosed me completely yet (knock on silicon). On the other hand...I've got another box which I've been running with ext3 for a couple months now with no problems (mail/webserver). So...your mileage may vary. I can tell you when I get my high-end box stable and performing up-to-snuff I'll announce it here... P.S. My "high-end" system is a dual 1Ghz/2G RAM/200G raid5/ext3 on fibre channel. ________________________________________ Michael D. Black Principal Engineer mblack@csihq.com 321-676-2923,x203 http://www.csihq.com Computer Science Innovations http://www.csihq.com/~mike My home page FAX 321-676-2355 ----- Original Message ----- From: "IT3 Stuart B. Tener, USNR-R" <stuart@bh90210.net> To: <ext3-users@redhat.com> Sent: Wednesday, July 25, 2001 7:35 PM Subject: EXT3 Worries Dear Sir or Ma'am: I am interested to think about implementing EXT3 onto my servers here. However, I have some concerns and am hoping someone can address them. 1) If I install ext3 what is the likelihood that the extent of damage caused by its bugs will be limited to just the fact that the journals may not work properly? Alternatively, do I risk real damage to files and the filesystem at this stage in its development? 2) Is there a projected period when you suspect it will be added to the Linus version of the kernel, and be available in all distributions (not just RH)? 3) Is there an ISO, which is inclusive of EXT3 so that I can boot it up in rescue mode and get to an EXT3 partition for repair purposes if, need be yet? I am not happy with ReiserFS as partition magic does not recognize its partition layout. I am waiting to implement EXT3 when it becomes available. Very Respectfully, Stuart Blake Tener, IT3, USNR-R, N3GWG Beverly Hills, California VTU 1904G (Volunteer Training Unit) stuart@bh90210.net west coast: (310)-358-0202 P.O. Box 16043, Beverly Hills, CA 90209-2043 east coast: (215)-338-6005 P.O. Box 45859, Philadelphia, PA 19149-5859 Telecopier: (419)-715-6073 fax to email gateway via www.efax.com (it's free!) JOIN THE US NAVY RESERVE, SERVE YOUR COUNTRY, AND BENEFIT FROM IT ALL. Wednesday, July 25, 2001 4:35 PM _______________________________________________ Ext3-users mailing list Ext3-users@redhat.com https://listman.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/ext3-users
On Wed, Jul 25, 2001 at 04:35:49PM -0700, IT3 Stuart B. Tener, USNR-R wrote:> > 1) If I install ext3 what is the likelihood that the extent of damage caused > by its bugs will be limited to just the fact that the journals may not work > properly? Alternatively, do I risk real damage to files and the filesystem > at this stage in its development?In general, ext3 will panic the system and reboot as soon as it detects an inconsistency, so usually this happens before there's any filesystem damage (and since you're using ext3 the fsck time is really fast :-) That being said, it is development code, so there's always some chance that something disasterous might happen.... I am using it on my laptop where I store all of my e-mail, though, I am fairly confident in its stability, though.> 2) Is there a projected period when you suspect it will be added to the > Linus version of the kernel, and be available in all distributions (not just > RH)?Hopefully soon!> 3) Is there an ISO, which is inclusive of EXT3 so that I can boot it up in > rescue mode and get to an EXT3 partition for repair purposes if, need be > yet?Actually, since ext3 is backwards compatible with ext2, all you need is a rescue disk with a sufficiently new version of e2fsprogs (the rescue disk's kernel doesn't even need to support ext3). It's not hard to make an ISO which has an updated e2fsprogs, but I'm not aware of someone who has a downloadable ISO image which uses a recent e2fsprogs off the top of my head. (I generally make my own when I need one. :-) - Ted
Hi, On Wed, Jul 25, 2001 at 04:35:49PM -0700, IT3 Stuart B. Tener, USNR-R wrote:> I am interested to think about implementing EXT3 onto my servers here. > However, I have some concerns and am hoping someone can address them. > > 1) If I install ext3 what is the likelihood that the extent of damage caused > by its bugs will be limited to just the fact that the journals may not work > properly? Alternatively, do I risk real damage to files and the filesystem > at this stage in its development?There's always risk. The 2.4 kernel may have VM bugs, driver bugs, VFS bugs and there may be ext3 bugs. Your hardware may be flaky, too, in any of a thousand different unpredictable ways. You just can't ever guarantee anything to be risk-free. However, I've had ext3 on laptops and workstations for 18 months and have never once had any data loss. I've almost never had any data corruption at all --- ext3's internal consistency checks have, in the past, tended to trap problems way before they ever got to disk.> 2) Is there a projected period when you suspect it will be added to the > Linus version of the kernel, and be available in all distributions (not just > RH)?That's up to Linus, but I'll be pushing for it in 2.5. Linus has already said he's happy about it in principle, but the devil is always in the details. In this particular case, ext3's data journaling facilities try to do things which the core VM doesn't really support, so the ext3 patches extend the core in a few self-contained ways to allow it to work happily. Merging into 2.5 will require either for Linus to approve those changes or for ext3 to work around the core problems, but the changes we want are compatible with a significant cleanup of some VM bits so I don't envisage a problem there.> 3) Is there an ISO, which is inclusive of EXT3 so that I can boot it up in > rescue mode and get to an EXT3 partition for repair purposes if, need be > yet?Any iso with a recent e2fsprogs will be able to run fsck on an ext3 filesystem. e2fsprogs-1.22 is recommended, and the e2fsck in it fully understands ext3. Cheers, Stephen
On Wed, Aug 1, 2001, at 14:21:04 +0100 Stephen C. Tweedie wrote:>> 2) Is there a projected period when you suspect it will be >> added to the Linus version of the kernel, and be available in >> all distributions (not just RH)?> That's up to Linus, but I'll be pushing for it in 2.5.2.5 ? Then various distributions won't include it before 2.6 ! Mainly because they don't patch the Kernel like Red Hat and others. ReiserFS was included in Slackware 8.0 as an option because Linus added it in 2.4.1, but the default 2.2.19 Kernel doesn't use it. Waiting ~2 years to have it as an option isn't good, but one can install as ext2 and switch, or include support in their installation, what I'm doing. I'm just curious if patches for all 2.4 releases will be made once Linus adds it in 2.5. Like many others, I'd really like to see it in future 2.4 releases, not only in the unstable Kernel, but it's up to you and Linus.> Linus has already said he's happy about it in principle, but > the devil is always in the details. In this particular case, > ext3's data journaling facilities try to do things which the > core VM doesn't really support, so the ext3 patches extend > the core in a few self-contained ways to allow it to work > happily. Merging into 2.5 will require either for Linus to > approve those changes or for ext3 to work around the core > problems, but the changes we want are compatible with a > significant cleanup of some VM bits so I don't envisage a > problem there.-- 0@pervalidus.{net, {dyndns.}org} Tel: 55-21-2717-2399 (Niterói-RJ BR)