Re: New Linux xfs/reiser file systems

Michael Samuel wrote:
>
> ReiserFS only supports metadata logging. The performance slowdown must be
> due to logging things like mtime or atime, because otherwise ReiserFS is a
> very high performance FS. (Although, I admittedly haven't used it since it
> was early in it's development)

The way I understand it is that ReiserFS does not attempt to separate files at
the block level. Multiple files can live in the same disk block. This is cool
if you have many small files, but the extra overhead for large files such as
those used by a database, is a bit much.

I read some stuff about a year ago, and my impressions forced me to conclude
that ReiserFS was geared toward applications. Which is a pretty good thing for
applications, but not for databases.

I really think a simple low down dirty file system is just what the doctor
ordered for postgres.

Remember, general purpose file systems must do for files what Postgres is
already doing for records. You will always have extra work. I am seriously
thinking of trying a FAT32 as pg_xlog. I wonder if it will improve performance,
or if there is just something fundamentally stupid about FAT32 that will make
it worse?

--
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