In case you wondered, the simple-to-install reiserfs does improve Linux file handling
I DECIDED TO LIVE dangerously this past week and create a couple of reiserfs partitions on my primary Linux server. Reiserfs is a journaling file system that claims to be more efficient than the de facto standard ext2fs file system at handling many small files and just as efficient as ext2fs in other cases. I haven't done any benchmarks yet, but the performance of my Web cache and proxy seems to have improved dramatically since I put all of its files on a reiserfs partition. So consider me a big fan of reiserfs so far.
What I like most about reiserfs is that it recovers from things such as power failures extremely fast because it doesn't have to perform the lengthy consistency checks required by ext2fs.
Some distributions have reiserfs compiled in as a module. In that case, all you need to do is make sure you have the reiserfs utilities installed and then issue the command modprobe reiserfs to load the module. After that you're ready to format a partition as reiserfs and start using it.
If you don't have reiserfs compiled into your kernel or available as a module, fear not. It is very easy to build reiserfs support into your kernel. Download and install the source code for the kernel of your choice (I am using the 2.2.17 kernel).
Then download the reiserfs patch. You can get the patch at www.namesys.com/download.html or any of the available site mirrors. Put the patch in your /usr/src directory or the directory immediately above where you have your kernel source code.
Before you take the next step, make sure that the path to the kernel source code is /usr/src/linux. If it isn't, then rename the kernel source-code directory or create a symbolic link to provide this path. For example, the default Debian source-code directory might be kernel-source-2.2.17. In that case you want to create a symbolic link such as cd /usr/src; ln -skernel-source-2.2.17 linux.
Now apply the patch. Change to the /usr/src directory and use the command zcat linux-2.2.17-reiserfs-3.5.27-patch.gz| patch -p0 to apply the patch. If you hastily uncompressed the file, then run the command patch -p0 linux-2.2.17-reiserfs-3.5.27-patch instead.
Now you need to configure your kernel. There are several ways to do this, but I prefer to make changes to the /usr/src/linux directory and run make menuconfig for this step. You'll need ncurses development libraries installed for this to work. If you're a hard-core Linux user or want to become one, just run make config instead. You can also run make xconfig if you prefer a graphical configuration tool.
You should now notice a reiserfs option in the configuration process under the topic File Systems. Select it. I have reiserfs configured as a loadable module because that makes it easier to fix any potential reiserfs problems in the future without having to recompile the whole kernel.
There is another option to enable reiserfs internal checks. This is really for debugging purposes, so I strongly recommend that you do not use this option because it will slow performance of reiserfs.
If this is your first attempt at creating a custom kernel, you'll need to step through all the options and make sure your kernel supports everything you need for your system. It is way beyond the scope of this column to walk you through that process. I recommend reading the ReadMe file in the /usr/src/linux directory for instructtions on how to configure and install your new kernel.
Finally, you'll need to compile the reiserfs utilities and install them. This is a very simple process. Just change to the /usr/src/linux/fs/reiserfs/utils directory and run make dep; make; make install.
Now create a partition that you want to format as reiserfs. Mark the partition as a Linux file system, the same way you would if you were about to create a standard ext2 file system.
Assuming your new partition is /dev/hdb3, you would then run mkreiserfs /dev/hdb3 in order to format the partition. This process will overwrite any data you may have on this partition, so be sure you know what you're doing. Now mount the partition and get to work!
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