Re: Partition format for Suse 9.2- - ext2 or ext3

From: Nico Kadel-Garcia (nkadel_at_comcast.net)
Date: 02/05/05 

Date: Fri, 4 Feb 2005 20:48:05 -0500

"Tom F." <fur_tom502@earthlink.nospam.net> wrote in message
news:tETMd.691$oO.127@newsread2.news.atl.earthlink.net...
> sherry wrote:
>
>> I did a search on these; however, wondering if an expert can explain
>> me some
>> difference b/t these. I have two HD: Winxp(SP2) on master and suse'll
>> be installed on slave. So, in the future i would like to share files
>> b/t these two systems (if possible). Please, explain me which one
>> would be a better choice.
>
> Well, you asked for an expert. Since none have taken up your post, you'll
> have to settle for me ;-)
>
> As to the difference between ext2 and 3, three is better all things being
> equal. Ext3 is a "journaling" file system. Meaning basically it protects
> data integrity better in the event something goes wrong, like a power
> loss.
> Unless you have a compelling reason to use ext2, you will probably be
> better
> served with ext3. Reiser and JFS are alternatives to ext3. There's even
> XFS, but I don't know too much about it. It's simmilar to JFS being 64
> bit.

There are other differences. Ext3 takes a bit more CPU to process, and
various partitioning tools like Partition Magic will treat it as ext2 and
throw away your journal. Also, the most recent ext3 versions with the 2.6
kernel and tools use a new structure called "htrees" to organize your
filesystem. htrees allows you to have many thousands of files in a single
directory without bogging down anything that does a "stat:" function in the
directory, such as doin an "ls -l".

> They all have their strengths and weaknesses. Reiser is supposed to
> perform
> a little better and JFS is good for large servers, but on a home system I
> wouldn't think it would be at all significant. I'd stick with Ext3.

Despite Reiserfs's popularity for servers, I find it actually more prone to
destructive failures on a RAID array that is beginning to fail.

> As to sharing files between XP and linux, the answer isn't as good. Linux
> can read all windows filesystems, so if you want to get data FROM your
> windows partitions, you shouldn't have any problems. However, no version
> of
> windows can read or write to any linux native file system. As far as
> windows is concerned, your linux partitions won't even exist. I don't know
> any way to get windows to read or write to linux native file systems. I
> don't think there is any.

There are some commercial tools that provide access to ext2 that I've seen
advertised. You can usually treat an ext3 file-system as ext2 when you're
not actually using it, as long as you don't get wildly creative with it and
make a mess.

> In addition, XP's default file system is NTFS. Unless you upgraded XP from
> an earlier version of windows, the partitions on your windows disk is
> probably formatted on NTFS. Linux can read NTFS file systems, but the
> default does not have the ability to write to them. Support for writing to
> these partitions is experimental and not recommended. Unless you really
> don't mind data loss on your windows system, I would definitely not
> recommend trying to write to these partitions via linux.

Yeah, Linux and other UNIX-like systems simply don't have the same ownership
and group concepts as NTFS does, and it's really easy to screw up.

> What you can do however, is format a partition in vfat (FAT32). You can do
> this from linux or windows. (SuSE's YaST can do this at the time of
> installation.) Linux can read and write to vfat partitions splendidly.
> This
> partition can be your "share" disk and you can place any files you would
> like read and write access on it.

Bingo.

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