# Making a file server to last years... Can I trust reiser4?

## Brazil

I am making a SAMBA file server for a college professor for his personal use...

I have 4 hard drives...

   -2x20gb drives for the Gentoo system in a RAID mirror

   -2x250gb drives I want to use for the /home dir in a RAID Mirror

The goal of the box is to last  atleast 5 years... but reaching for 10.  The hope is  that I will never have to see this box unless I have too.

I want to use reiser4 NOW to ensure the use of the latest benifits availble...

The goal of Reiser 4 is integrity and security... but it's still considered experimental.

Does anyone think it would be a bad idea, or a huge risk  if I were to use mm-sources w/ kernel 2.6.9 now?

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## Jake

 *Brazil wrote:*   

> I want to use reiser4 NOW to ensure the use of the latest benifits availble...
> 
> 

 

I was an early adopter of reiserfs, even earlier for reiser4, but I have to say no. What benefits does reiser4 have for a personal fileserver? My fileserver runs FreeBSD 4.10 using soft updates, and with HD cache disabled, even though it's RAID-0. Sure the drives could go, but at least the OS and filesystem won't let me down. The stuff I keep on that server isn't exactly mission-critical. Speed doesn't matter. The best I can get over a 10/100 network is ~12Mb/sec anyway.

The only new filesystem I could recommend is ZFS on Solaris, but it hasn't been released yet. It's atomic, keeps checksums, and I'm sure Sun has torutured it during testing. We're comparing a company that sells storage by the hundreds of terabytes, to Namesys, an organization that refuses to buy AMD64 hardware (holding out for a donation) for debugging and fixing reiser4, which frequently locks up and corrupts on AMD64.

Unfortunately, the new-ness of reiser4 outweighs the benefit of being atomic. I'm not even sure I'd trust reiserfs on your server. It has a history of causing corruption on slightly bad drives that would work with ext3. If you're buying drives with a 1 year warranty and expecting them to last 5, I think it's safe to expect at least some blocks to go bad.

What you have to worry about most is a drive going bad and not getting replaced. Run SMART and whatever else could help detect problems. Or you could not keep all your prefessor's eggs in one basket and tell him to make backups. RAID-1 doesn't help when you accidentally delete something then want it back.

I've had nothing but trouble with mm kernels. Not so long ago an mm release had a corruption bug. Whatever kernel you use, turn off stuff like preempt that doesn't help a personal server and could introduce instablility. I wouldn't even use Gentoo. Use Debian or Slackware if you want Linux. If you do use Gentoo, limit your CFLAGS to "-O2 -march=whatever -fomit-frame-pointer" and stay away from ~arch.

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## NewBlackDak

If you want a server to last years then don't use ATA drives at all. Go SCSI.

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## Brazil

The 2 250gb drives are hitachi SATA... and w/ 3 year warrenty.

It was probably over zeslous to say maybe 10 years... I guess I should tell him 5 max... 3 w/ certainty.

I'm making this out of a old Gateway box... he wants to spend as little as possible.

I would of done debian... but he also insists using 2 of these usb laser printers... and I wanted to use udev so everytime he plugs it in, CUPS wont get confused... Last time I checked, Debian developers are stuck w/ devfs still.

So, very well... I think I will just do reiser3 or jfs.

I am starting to wish I did do Debian for every other reason, but I got the /home on seperate drives... I can always migrate later....

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## transienteagle

Brazil,

 *Quote:*   

> I would of done debian... but he also insists using 2 of these usb laser printers... and I wanted to use udev so everytime he plugs it in, CUPS wont get confused... Last time I checked, Debian developers are stuck w/ devfs still.
> 
> So, very well... I think I will just do reiser3 or jfs.
> 
> I am starting to wish I did do Debian for every other reason, but I got the /home on seperate drives... I can always migrate later....

 

Looking at what you want to do, I personally would favour Debian also. I use Debian for all my production work (stable branch, absolutely bulletproof) and use Gentoo (personal favourite) for home use and testing new ideas.

Debian does support udev (testing and unstable branches).

I would also be tempted to stick with ext3 (nothing wrong with it IMHO). 

rgds

TE

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## TrainedChimp

 *NewBlackDak wrote:*   

> If you want a server to last years then don't use ATA drives at all. Go SCSI.

 

Not to side track this thread, but I have had to replace literally hundreds of SCSI drives in certain brands of servers. I can't believe how many of those have simply died. I'm not saying SCSI isn't a good thing, I am just saying that SCSI doesn't necessarily imply long lasting. You shouldn't make that generalization.

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## NewBlackDak

 *TrainedChimp wrote:*   

>  *NewBlackDak wrote:*   If you want a server to last years then don't use ATA drives at all. Go SCSI. 
> 
> Not to side track this thread, but I have had to replace literally hundreds of SCSI drives in certain brands of servers. I can't believe how many of those have simply died. I'm not saying SCSI isn't a good thing, I am just saying that SCSI doesn't necessarily imply long lasting. You shouldn't make that generalization.

 

That's what raid is for.  I'm not saying SCSI drives don't fail.  Every harddrive eventually fails.  I'm not saying I've never replaced any SCSI drive, because I've replaced my fair share.  I've replaced on the order of 4 times as many IDE drives though.  Also, now since they only come with a 1 yr warranty you're not guaranteed anything but a year.  Some SCSI drives actually still come with a 5yr warranty.

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## Brazil

Well... I went w/ ext3 for the file system...

I'm still using the Gentoo setup... and I think it is actually pretty stable.  I use only the x86.

It's for home use, it's a pain to compile things in the beginning, but it's not that big of a deal once you get everything installed, then you want to install one more  package.

I just have to iron out some SAMBA issues.

Maybe reiser4 won't be ready for a really long time to make me feel better w/ this decision...   :Wink: 

And on the SCSI debate.... That's what the point of using RAID is for... What are the chances of both drives failing within the time needed to replace the drive?

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## VanDan

Fine then.

I'll put my vote in for reiser4.

I was also an early adopter of reiser3 ( back then I was patching 2.2 kernels to add reiser3 support I believe ). It's always been good to me.

I started installing desktop PCs on reiser4 filesystems quite a while ago, and they've been running 24/7 for probably 6 months now without issue ... well ... without data loss issues  :Smile:  There used to be some bugs - an nfs-related bug, and some other bug that stopped me from compiling OpenOffice in a reiser4 filesystem. Both those seem to have been fixed.

Most of these systems have ( unfortunately ) been hard-rebooted by idiot users who can't figure out that an application is waiting for them to click a dialog box, or have forgotten that they've turned the monitor off, or some such issue. Each time reiser4 has recovered admirably.

I would say 'go it'. Of course I would also recommend that you do regular backups, but not because I don't think reiser4 is stable ... it's just a wise thing to do.

There are some nice benefits to reiser4, as I'm sure you're aware. It's damned fast. A fast filesystem is good for a fileserver, no?

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## chickaroo

i've tried reiser4 3 times now... i had it in 2.6.7, a bunch of 2.6.8.x kernels and some of the newer 2.6.9/2.6.10-rc kernels and i always get errors when i fsck my drives. i had like 4883 lost+found files in var, and some issues in /usr also... is it my luck? no one else gets errors on fsck? disconencted nodes, wrong byte size, incorrect tree size, nodes claiming duplicate spots, etc... doesn't look good to me

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## VanDan

Could very well be you ... or at least what you're doing.

I know that there have been some bugs with the chks.reiser4 app - it's always a good idea to keep your reiser4progs up-to-date.

I don't know ... I don't even *have* a lost+found directory.

That said, I've only ever run fsck.reiser4 once - and that was to fix some bugs that were in the reiser4 filesystem that were inherent in the tools that I used to create the filesystem to start with ... I just upgraded reiser4progs, rebooted into single-user mode and ran fsck.reiser4 on it, and it fixed a few things ( from the original format operation apparently ) and that was it. I certainly didn't loose any data. And that was with version 0.5 of the reiser4progs ( or something like that ). You kinda expect that sort of thing if you're using an unstable tool to create the fs to start with.

I haven't had the need to run fsck.reiser4 again - the odd time when a PC gets the power pulled on it, the log gets replayed *really* fast, and everything is working as usual. No complaints from users anyway, and no issues with upgrading stuff, via emerge, etc.

I suspect something is up  :Smile: 

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## chickaroo

it only does a quick fsck on boot... i do a full fsck a lot... (runlevel 1 with all partitions mounted readonly) and i get tons of errors on stuff. i kind of had a feeling you guys (people who report no problems with reiser4)  don't actually run the FULL fsck... lol. could be using corrupted filesystems and you don't even know it. 

okay this is a bit OT i guess... hehehe

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