# Mount reiserfs, sounds weird. Reiserfs optimization.

## Terrax

Hey folks..

I just switched from ext3 to reiserfs. And oh my god emerge --sync is fast now on my raid0 device. But I wonder. Everytime I mount a reiserfs device, it sounds very weird from the disc. And it takes alittle longer mounting.

Another question.

How do I optimize reiserfs for most speed? I have heard about a notail option?

And why is my dmesg showing this?:

```

ReiserFS: dm-2: found reiserfs format "3.6" with standard journal

ReiserFS: dm-2: warning: CONFIG_REISERFS_CHECK is set ON

ReiserFS: dm-2: warning: - it is slow mode for debugging.

ReiserFS: dm-2: using ordered data mode

ReiserFS: dm-2: journal params: device dm-2, size 8192, journal first block 18,$

ReiserFS: dm-2: checking transaction log (dm-2)

ReiserFS: dm-2: journal-1153: found in header: first_unflushed_offset 1998, las$

ReiserFS: dm-2: journal-1206: Starting replay from offset 1998, trans_id 203

ReiserFS: dm-2: journal-1299: Setting newest_mount_id to 11

ReiserFS: dm-2: Using r5 hash to sort names

```

I was pointing about the second and third line?

Thx for this great forum!!! Really helped me alot.

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## plasmagunman

 *Terrax wrote:*   

> And why is my dmesg showing this?:
> 
> ```
> 
> ReiserFS: dm-2: found reiserfs format "3.6" with standard journal
> ...

 

you enabled CONFIG_REISERFS_CHECK on your kernel-compile, which is a slow mode for debugging. recompile your kernel and make sure that "enable reiserfs debug mode" is unchecked:

```
<*> Reiserfs support

    [ ] Enable reiserfs debug mode

```

help tells you:  *Quote:*   

> CONFIG_REISERFS_CHECK:
> 
> If you set this to Y, then ReiserFS will perform every check it can
> 
> possibly imagine of its internal consistency throughout its
> ...

 

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## Terrax

Ok thx.

But what about the slow mount'ing? And the funny noise of a hd, which work too fast?

And should I use the notail option in fstab?

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## mmbrothers

 *Terrax wrote:*   

> Ok thx.
> 
> But what about the slow mount'ing? And the funny noise of a hd, which work too fast?
> 
> And should I use the notail option in fstab?

 

As for the slow mounting, yes reiserfs does mount slower than ext3.  It does more things at mount than ext3.  Often when mounting a filesystem you can hear a difference in the drive activity because the fs gathers data from all over the filesystem in order to complete the mount.  You most likely would hear the same type of noise if you ran a program that accessed the drive in a truly random access fashion; fortunately most normal disk accesses take advantage of spatial locality.

As for the notail option, this is really a personal preference.  The notail option will increase the speed of the filesystem but at the expense of space.  In computers it is very hard to tune a system such that all parameters are optimal.  Often when you tune for space you hurt time efficiency and vice-versa  If this will be a filesystem where you store many small file it may be beneficial to use tails.  You can try both and see which one is right for you.

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## Felixlein

I also wondered a few times because of this funny sound when mounting reiserfs-partitions on my maxtor-sata-drive

Under no other circumstances I get this whispering sizzle-type of sound from this HD.sounds like the heads

move really fast back and forth on a small area of the disk.

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## Terrax

Ok thx for your answers. Now Im not worry about the sound anymore.

By the way. Is this the right options, to make in fstab for best performance?

```

/dev/mapper/nvidia_ggffjaja1                /mnt/c-drev     reiserfs            noatime,notail    0 0

```

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## mmbrothers

 *Terrax wrote:*   

> Ok thx for your answers. Now Im not worry about the sound anymore.
> 
> By the way. Is this the right options, to make in fstab for best performance?
> 
> ```
> ...

 

If you are concerned about the speed of the filesystem these options seem pretty reasonable.

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## Massimo B.

I would say using tails makes blocksize quite unimportant. But with notail small files all take 4k by default. I wasn't able to boot a reiserfs with b=1024, but could be a  ppc issue.

If someone has lot of time and likes to do tests with the following options:hashed_relocationno_unhashed_relocationnobordernolog..which all claim .. may provide performance improvements in some situations.

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## Massimo B.

Adventurous as I am I tried mounting reiserfs with options known from ext3.

And curiously it didn't complain. Does reiserfs know these options   commit=, data=   too, and why isn't it documented in man mount?

On google I found several messages doing the same..

```
mount -o remount /dev/hda4 / -o noatime,commit=30,data=writeback
```

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