28 Sep
2003
28 Sep
'03
8:53 p.m.
Hi,
I am trying to setup my new laptop to be a very friendly environment for
multimedia editing and software development. I have been googling for
several hours now and am having trouble coming to a conclusive decision
over which filesystem to run. I am leaning toward ReiserFS, but have
looked at XFS pretty closely. I have read a little on
ext3, but what I have found seems a little bit dated now. Any opinions
you guys might have would be very welcome. Here is a summary of the
strengths/weeknesses of each of them as far as I can tell.
Summary:
XFS: Great for a multimedia server. Very fast performance with large
files. Not as fast as ReiserFS with smaller files (E.g. software
development and day to day use). Tendency to get corrupted on laptops.
ReiserFS: Seems to be a good balance. Pretty fast performance with large
files, excellent performance with smaller files, very fast at seeking out
the location of a file, robust in a laptop environment.
ext3: slow. Many tests online compared ext3 to XFS and Reiser and found
it failing regularly when used for large file read/writes.
Before I jump in and just do it...
Anyone have any horror stories of ReiserFS on a laptop, or ReiserFS with
Ardour?
Anyone have any anecdotes that illustrate that XFS is:
a. Suitable for use on a laptop now?
b. Suitable for use on a developers box and not just on a
multimedia workhorse?
Thanks for *any* insight into these two filesystems.
--g
28 Sep
28 Sep
9:01 p.m.
On 09/28/2003 11:39:27 AM, glimt wrote:
I am trying to setup my new laptop to be a very
friendly environment for
multimedia editing and software development. I have been googling for
several hours now and am having trouble coming to a conclusive decision
over which filesystem to run. I am leaning toward ReiserFS, but have
looked at XFS pretty closely. I have read a little on
ext3, but what I have found seems a little bit dated now. Any opinions
you guys might have would be very welcome.
Honestly, how could the reliability of ANY filesystem depend on whether you're
using a laptop or not? I hightly doubt if your file system knows whether it's
in a desktop or a laptop in any way other than frequent power cycles.
I have used all three, and I agree that EXT3 is not ideal for multimedia.
Currently I use:
tmpfs for /tmp
xfs for any directories containing audio or video (usually /home)
reiserfs for all else (/usr, /var, etc.)
I have had a reiser partition get screwed up, but only once, and it was
fixable. I'm very impressed with xfs so far, but be aware that it's the
latest version.
The /tmp setting makes much more of a difference than anything else though...
Austin
--
Austin Acton
Synthetic Organic Chemist, Teaching Assistant, Ph.D. Candidate
Department of Chemistry, York University, Toronto
MandrakeLinux Volunteer Developer, homepage: www.groundstate.ca
9:27 p.m.
Laptops go into suspend mode, come out of suspend mode, support suspend to
disk, etc. Most of the bugs I have seen mentioned revolve around this
area. Also, laptops tend to run out of power and just go thunk (if no
power management is configured) than desktops do.
I will probably do what you did. Use reiserfs everywhere except where I
do my multimedia work.
How does ReiserFS perform for multimedia work? OK, or do I really
absolutely need to use XFS?
Thanks,
--Craig
On Sun, 28 Sep 2003, Austin wrote:
On 09/28/2003 11:39:27 AM, glimt wrote:
I am trying to setup my new laptop to be a very
friendly environment for
multimedia editing and software development. I have been googling for
several hours now and am having trouble coming to a conclusive decision
over which filesystem to run. I am leaning toward ReiserFS, but have
looked at XFS pretty closely. I have read a little on
ext3, but what I have found seems a little bit dated now. Any opinions
you guys might have would be very welcome.
Honestly, how could the reliability of ANY filesystem depend on whether you're
using a laptop or not? I hightly doubt if your file system knows whether it's
in a desktop or a laptop in any way other than frequent power cycles.
I have used all three, and I agree that EXT3 is not ideal for multimedia.
Currently I use:
tmpfs for /tmp
xfs for any directories containing audio or video (usually /home)
reiserfs for all else (/usr, /var, etc.)
I have had a reiser partition get screwed up, but only once, and it was
fixable. I'm very impressed with xfs so far, but be aware that it's the
latest version.
The /tmp setting makes much more of a difference than anything else though...
Austin
--
Austin Acton
Synthetic Organic Chemist, Teaching Assistant, Ph.D. Candidate
Department of Chemistry, York University, Toronto
MandrakeLinux Volunteer Developer, homepage: www.groundstate.ca
10:50 p.m.
On 09/28/2003 12:13:26 PM, glimt wrote:
Laptops go into suspend mode, come out of suspend
mode, support suspend to
disk, etc. Most of the bugs I have seen mentioned revolve around this
area. Also, laptops tend to run out of power and just go thunk (if no
power management is configured) than desktops do.
You're right. I rarely use battery power on my laptop, so I didn't think of
that.
How does ReiserFS perform for multimedia work? OK, or
do I really
absolutely need to use XFS?
As I said previously, both reiser and xfs noticeably outperform etx3 for
multimedia apps. They seem about the same except for serious video editing,
where xfs reigns supreme. Like I said, for audio, the most important thing is
to speed up /tmp... ext REALLY sucks for /tmp.
Austin
--
Austin Acton
Synthetic Organic Chemist, Teaching Assistant, Ph.D. Candidate
Department of Chemistry, York University, Toronto
MandrakeLinux Volunteer Developer, homepage: www.groundstate.ca
29 Sep
29 Sep
5:22 a.m.
Sunday 28 September 2003 22.38 skrev Austin:
On 09/28/2003 12:13:26 PM, glimt wrote:
I think it's quite common here to use RaiserFS for everything but /tmp, with
quite good performance. Some are using ext3 also. I don't think it's such a
big issue...
Myself I use RaiserFS together with tmpfs for /tmp, seems to be working quite
well. I do have x-runs at times, har to tell what they are related to
though...
/Robert
Laptops go into suspend mode, come out of suspend
mode, support suspend
to disk, etc. Most of the bugs I have seen mentioned revolve around this
area. Also, laptops tend to run out of power and just go thunk (if no
power management is configured) than desktops do.
You're right. I rarely use battery power on my laptop, so I didn't think
of that.
> How does ReiserFS perform for multimedia work? OK, or do I really
> absolutely need to use XFS? 
30 Sep
30 Sep
4:40 a.m.
> I am trying to setup my new laptop to be a very
friendly
> environment for multimedia editing and software
Currently I use:
tmpfs for /tmp
The /tmp setting makes much more of a difference than anything else
though...
I would really recommend that people use tmpfs for /tmp (mounts /tmp in
ram). I googled "tmpfs" and there were some very good articles out there.
I've been meaning to pose this question for a while, so maybe this is a
good time to do it. Am I the only one out there that has their "Record
Directory" mounted as a tmpfs? I went out and bought a half a gig of ram
and brought my ram up to over 700 Megs of Ram. Now I just move all my
audio files into the "Record Directory" (in other words, in Ram) and
record out of that. Of course, I periodically copy the newly recorded
file to the hard drive.
The only thing is... I can't vouch for this approach because I havn't
had more than 2 (sterio 48000) wavs playing and 1 sterio 48000 wav being
recorded to at the same time. But there hasn't been so much as one
hiccup. But I guess the reason I haven't mentioned about this approach
is because I've (many times before) thought I stumbled on to something
great, only to find out that it wasn't as good as it looked on the
outside. But I have the feeling I'm going to keep getting good
performance from this meathod. And with the price of Ram these days,
it's an affordable approach.
Rocco
4:55 a.m.
Tuesday 30 September 2003 08.23 skrev Rocco:
I would really recommend that people use tmpfs for /tmp (mounts /tmp in
ram). I googled "tmpfs" and there were some very good articles out there.
I've been meaning to pose this question for a while, so maybe this is a
good time to do it. Am I the only one out there that has their "Record
Directory" mounted as a tmpfs? I went out and bought a half a gig of ram
and brought my ram up to over 700 Megs of Ram. Now I just move all my
audio files into the "Record Directory" (in other words, in Ram) and
record out of that. Of course, I periodically copy the newly recorded
file to the hard drive.
The only thing is... I can't vouch for this approach because I havn't
had more than 2 (sterio 48000) wavs playing and 1 sterio 48000 wav being
recorded to at the same time. But there hasn't been so much as one
hiccup. But I guess the reason I haven't mentioned about this approach
is because I've (many times before) thought I stumbled on to something
great, only to find out that it wasn't as good as it looked on the
outside. But I have the feeling I'm going to keep getting good
performance from this meathod. And with the price of Ram these days,
it's an affordable approach.
Yeah, if you got the ram this should be pretty good.
I'm wondering about the size of the partition though.
I've heard that tmpfs is dynamically resized. With this kind of approach,
wouldn't it be a good idea if it was possible to set the partition to a
specific size? This to avoid putting to much in the partition and causing the
machine to start swapping.
Or is it already possible to specify a size for tmpfs partitions?
/Robert
I am trying to setup my new laptop to be a very
friendly
environment for multimedia editing and software
Currently I use:
tmpfs for /tmp
The /tmp setting makes much more of a difference than anything else
though... 
5:42 a.m.
Robert Jonsson wrote:
Or is it already possible to specify a size for tmpfs
partitions?
Yes, the "size" mount option. In my /etc/fstab I have the line
tmpfs /tmp tmpfs defaults,size=800M 0 0
This gives me a /tmp of 800M, on a machine with 288M RAM and 1.2GB of
swap. Otherwise a tmpfs filesystem is limited to half of RAM. Yes,
this means that if I put too much in /tmp the machine will start to
swap, but that's OK with me because the swap disk is different than the
disk I record to.
wes
7727
days inactive
7729
days old
linux-audio-user@lists.linuxaudio.org
7 comments
5 participants
participants (5)
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Austin -
glimt -
Robert Jonsson -
Rocco -
wes schreiner