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Is it time to remove reiserfs?

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Re: Is it time to remove reiserfs?

#41

Post by mark_undoio »

DocTomoe wrote: post #22

ReiserFS is a lesson in project naming. When I started in Linux full-time, back in the early 2000s, I was presented with different fs options - the installer did not give me any information on benefits, or on which ones were considered "stable". ext2 was available, but it also had a built-in version number, and I feared that once ext3 eventually rolled over, it might be incompatible. So I chose the fs that came with…

It's interesting that, having avoided a filesystem with a version number, you eventually ended up on Reiser 4! Shows how much some branding decisions can affect with you acquire a user or not, since you then stuck with the "brand" (though I presume quite a lot of time had passed and circumstances may have been different).

I formed the impression that Hans Reiser's somewhat bombastic approach did not interface well with kernel development anyhow when Reiser 4 came out. I remember reading some rather strange discussion threads at the time, including a - perhaps tongue-in-cheek - suggestion that Linux use Reiser 4 as its VFS and implement all other filesystems as plugins to it.

At one point, employees of his company were continuing to develop Reiser 4 (which they'd been working on for some time) and try to get it merged, even after the original author was no longer able to work on it. I presume those efforts were eventually dropped, which is very understandable but sad for the other developers.

Re: Is it time to remove reiserfs?

#42

Post by tombert »

Maybe someone with more understanding of kernel development could explain things to me.

Does there have to be explicit kernel-level support to support a filesystem? Even if they remove support, does that stop anyone from releasing a kernel module and supporting it?

Re: Is it time to remove reiserfs?

#43

Post by shaky-carrousel »

> There don't seem to be any fixes for user-spotted bugs since 2019. Does reiserfs still have a large install base that is just very happy with an old stable filesystem? Or have all its users migrated to new and exciting filesystems with active feature development?

Data loss bugs sure sound exciting, but I'm old, and stable, and I prefer my file systems like myself.

Re: Is it time to remove reiserfs?

#44

Post by dale_glass »

DocTomoe wrote: post #22

ReiserFS is a lesson in project naming. When I started in Linux full-time, back in the early 2000s, I was presented with different fs options - the installer did not give me any information on benefits, or on which ones were considered "stable". ext2 was available, but it also had a built-in version number, and I feared that once ext3 eventually rolled over, it might be incompatible. So I chose the fs that came with…

I don't think it's that big of a deal. If that was a big problem, but there was enough interest it would have just been renamed.

The issue as I remember is that ReiserFS was developed as a commercial product by Reiser's company, and after the trial started it fell apart, and with that the original developers had to find new jobs.

It's possible the commercial nature discouraged third party contributions -- who wants to effectively be an unpaid employee?

It also was rather troublesome with frequent stories of corruption, and at that time they were working on ReiserFS v4, which meant that anybody interested in filesystem guts was probably waiting for the next version to show up, rather than spending time on a very complex piece of code that was about to become obsolete. Kind of the same problem that Perl suffered from.

And after all was said and done, ReiserFS 4 was still incomplete and extremely experimental. The list of people looking to polish up a very complex piece of software without the original team's assistance couldn't have been very large.

I think all these things added up together and quickly finished it off.

Re: Is it time to remove reiserfs?

#45

Post by masklinn »

marcellus23 wrote: post #7
dzqhz wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Does reiserfs still have a large install base that is just very happy with an old stable filesystem? Or have all its users migrated to new and exciting filesystems with active feature development?

Can you point out what you think is snarky there?

It’s a bit of a stretch but I guess you could interpret calling a 20 years old FS “old” as snarky?

Though of course that it hasn’t received any major update in the last 15 years and is fast approaching major issues (iirc it’s not y2038-safe) are factors.

Re: Is it time to remove reiserfs?

#46

Post by lbriner »

daneel_w wrote: post #13
anxrn wrote: post #8

I presume by personality they're referring to Hans Reiser, the creator of ReiserFS, also a convicted murderer. Past HN thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2131221

Yes. Pretty much everyone is aware of the elephant in the room. It's just not relevant to address said elephant since it has no bearing on technical discussions, which is what the author of the e-mail thread pro-actively underlined.

The fact he is a murderer might not be relevant to the discussion per-se but his unavailability to help fixes/improvements to be made is a big issue as the author of the FS.

I don't know anything about it and whether other contributors are able to give as much input as he could but judging by the comments of unfixed bugs and few commits, it would sound like it is a big risk of stagnation. No?

Re: Is it time to remove reiserfs?

#47

Post by marginalia_nu »

andix wrote: post #23
marginalia_nu wrote: post #10

ReiserFS does have its benefits in highly specific use-cases. I have a filesystem with an absurd number of tiny files in it. I host a statically rendered wikipedia mirror. Tens of millions of gzipped html-files with a filesize in the range 1-5 Kb. ReiserFS is the only filesystem I know that deals even the slightest bit gracefully with this thanks to tail-packing.

Wouldn’t it be better to keep such files inside a database?

A filesystem is a database.

Re: Is it time to remove reiserfs?

#48

Post by prima-facie »

DocTomoe wrote: post #22

ReiserFS is a lesson in project naming. When I started in Linux full-time, back in the early 2000s, I was presented with different fs options - the installer did not give me any information on benefits, or on which ones were considered "stable". ext2 was available, but it also had a built-in version number, and I feared that once ext3 eventually rolled over, it might be incompatible. So I chose the fs that came with…

Maybe it's a sort of Teutonic tradition to name things after yourself. e.g. Hetzner, ReiserFS.

Re: Is it time to remove reiserfs?

#49

Post by ilammy »

mpalczewski wrote: post #14
anxrn wrote: post #8

I presume by personality they're referring to Hans Reiser, the creator of ReiserFS, also a convicted murderer. Past HN thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2131221

Anything to prevent them from changing the name of the filesystem?

Even if they do this cosmetic change now, take effort deal with silly regressions and reeducating users, it will still take quite some time for people to stop parroting in every thread about $newfs, that it's about “$newfs, previously known as reiserfs, originally authored by a convicted murderer”. This ship has sailed long time ago. Maybe there aren't that many users remaining now to begin with.

Re: Is it time to remove reiserfs?

#50

Post by dale_glass »

mark_undoio wrote: post #41
DocTomoe wrote: post #22

ReiserFS is a lesson in project naming. When I started in Linux full-time, back in the early 2000s, I was presented with different fs options - the installer did not give me any information on benefits, or on which ones were considered "stable". ext2 was available, but it also had a built-in version number, and I feared that once ext3 eventually rolled over, it might be incompatible. So I chose the fs that came with…

It's interesting that, having avoided a filesystem with a version number, you eventually ended up on Reiser 4! Shows how much some branding decisions can affect with you acquire a user or not, since you then stuck with the "brand" (though I presume quite a lot of time had passed and circumstances may have been different). I formed the impression that Hans Reiser's somewhat bombastic approach did not interface well wi…

There were grandiose plans indeed! Including things like plugins, yes, and ideas like exposing metadata about files (like MP3 artist tags and such) in virtual files. You'd `cat song.mp3/artist` or some such, treating the file as a virtual directory.

There also was weird artwork to go with all of that:

http://web.archive.org/web/20070219175315/http://www.namesys...

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