8 ms·

Is it time to remove reiserfs?

158 points by thestoicattack 5y ago

tombert 5y ago
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?
- fredoralive 5y ago
  You can implement filesystems as a kernel module, or use a filesystem-in-userspace option.
- Piskvorrr 5y ago
  Not really, no. But you'd have to get the source and build the kernel module for the specific kernel it runs on. There are mechanisms to do this, such as DKMS (e.g. Virtualbox does this: it provides its kernel modules' code, OS/user provides kernel source, magic happens and sometimes it even works on the first try); having the module code always present in kernel source (even if it doesn't get built) is more convenient for building, but less convenient for kernel maintainers.
  - tombert 5y ago
    That's what I thought; I run zfs-dkms on my server, and I just assumed that other filesystems could do the same.
    - Piskvorrr 5y ago
      Pretty much any kernel module could go this way, yes. The discussion on LKML seems to be focused on "should WE maintain this code?"
- michaelt 5y ago
  Depends if you want to boot from it, IIRC. Your kernel has to have compiled-in support for the filesystem of the drive you store your kernel modules on.
  - j16sdiz 5y ago
    No, Initramfs solved this. As long as you can provide a list of block to the bootloader, everything works as expected. Thats how people boot from ZFS
shaky-carrousel 5y ago
> 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.
- __s 5y ago
  & in the year 2038 you'll lose your mind?
  - emaginniss 5y ago
    That's a generous assessment
  - shaky-carrousel 5y ago
    Probably. Alzheimer's runs on the family.
- gjm11 5y ago
  I don't know about you, but although I too am old and stable I have plenty of data-loss bugs, and I'm running on hardware that needs regular downtime and constant maintenance in order not to fail catastrophically. I therefore don't want my file systems too much like myself.
debug-desperado 5y ago
According to wikipedia Hans might be out on parole next year. As part of his release agreement he should be required to maintain his namesake filesystem.
dzqhz 5y ago
- torgoguys 5y ago
  What was snarky in the email? (Maybe it went over my head since I only have no reiser knowledge). EDIT: ignore. Sibling asked the same while I typed my question.
  - djbusby 5y ago
    On HN you can delete within some time-window.
- HideousKojima 5y ago
  I'm not seeing the snark in the email? Reiser was infamous for murdering his wife, and I'm guessing Wilcox doesn't want the discussion derailed by Reiser's sordid history.
  - dzqhz 5y ago
    >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?
    - tptacek 5y ago
      That's... not snark?
    - marcellus23 5y ago
      Can you point out what you think is snarky there?
      - masklinn 5y ago
        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.
rastapasta42 5y ago
anxrn 5y ago
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 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2131221
- daneel_w 5y ago
  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.
  - lbriner 5y ago
    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?
    - watwut 5y ago
      It is not like he would be the only person capable of contributing into it ever.
    - daneel_w 5y ago
      Everyone understands the implications for a piece of software when its principal developer disappears. Wallowing in the details won't change anything. It's been years already.
  - more_corn 5y ago
    Isn’t it relevant though? The sole author and support person is AFK for the foreseeable future.
    - deleted 5y ago
marginalia_nu 5y ago
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.
- formerly_proven 5y ago
  Stuff like this would probably benefit a lot from using a userspace VFS.
- the_mitsuhiko 5y ago
  Have you tried btrfs? It has tail packing, block subdivision and inline files.
  - hutrdvnj 5y ago
    Is btrfs stable yet?
    - acatton 5y ago
      It's always been. I used it on my servers in "Raid 10" mode and on my daily driver for 3 years now. As long as you don't do BTRFS-level raid 5/6. (Just do lvm-level or md-raid-level raid 5/6) don't do many subvolume with quota. (many subvolumes is fine) It's production ready. I don't know where this "btrfs is not stable" coming from. According to HackerNews, I should have lost my data due to BTRFS 10 times already.
      - pschastain 5y ago
        It never ceases to amaze me how so many people only consider their own experiences as relevant "btrfs is not stable" is coming from people for whom btrfs has not been stable. Why is that so hard to understand?
DocTomoe 5y ago
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 a name attached: ReiserFS. If someone was willing to attach their name to their code, I figured, that must be some quality code. ReiserFS served me well, even though it always was a system lurking in the background. I was not a storage specialist. I was just a guy doing work on a Linux desktop, and ReiserFS "just worked". Occassionally, I put in a new disk, and watched the progression of other fs. Eventually, I switched over to ReiserFSv4. Fast forward a few years, and the whole murder thing happens. Immediately the thing that made ReiserFS stand out for me becomes radioactive - the name is burnt. And I see distros slowly phasing out advertising the option of having a ReiserFS partition. Yes, it was still there when you searched for it, but it didn't feature prominently in the installers anymore. And it is obvious that the code becomes stale - arguably understandable, who would do OSS work on code that is branded the name of a murderer? Twenty years later, I am still a Linux user. The last ReiserFS disk got shredded a year ago. Feels like the end of an era. Lessons learned: Naming matters. If you attach your name to something and want that project to survive, maybe do not commit violent crimes.
- daneel_w 5y ago
  "... arguably understandable, who would do OSS work on code that is branded the name of a murderer?" Oh, I don't know, the Linux maintainers who have related to the software rationally and sensibly since Reisers' incarceration? Silly and lofty "lesson".
- andix 5y ago
  That’s why it’s best to only name things after dead people. Less surprises.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - 5y ago
29athrowaway 5y ago
- samhw 5y ago
  Eh, have you ever tried writing a filesystem?
Frost1x 5y ago
ReiserFS is a conversational litmus test I like to casually and indirectly name drop in technical interview discussions surrounding the world of Linux, file systems, and storage to fish and see if someone actually had been actively working in the domain circa 2000ish when there was a lot of hype and criticism bubbling surrounding performance with large sets of small files. Admittedly, it's not a great signal if the candidate hadn't heard of it or used it depending on their career length because plenty avoided it and happily lived in other FS worlds or avoided certain hype, but it's a fairly good positive signal if someone actually starts talking about it knowledgably in some way regardless of it on positive or critical notes--just have to keep survivorship and confirmation biases actively in mind when weighing these things.
- cogman10 5y ago
  Why not update to more modern FSes like BTRFS, XFS, or ZFS? BTRFS, in particular, is pretty heavily inspired by Reiser. I'm not entirely sure what's gained by asking a candidate about FAT16.
  - hulitu 5y ago
    Is XFS stable ? I tried reiserfs, jfs and xfs at the beginning and stuck with jfs because reiserfs would eat a lot of processor power and xfs would not run fsck when the power got interrupted which resulted in a corrupted filesystem.
    - cogman10 5y ago
      It was added to the kernel in 2004. It's stable. That being said, IMO, BTRFS and ZFS are better file systems.
- ericbarrett 5y ago
  Sadly, I don't think this is a good signal for anything anymore except being past a certain age and having been around Linux at the time. ReiserFS hasn't been relevant for fifteen years, as during its heydey it was quite unstable and after the incident development stopped completely. I say this as somebody who was in the storage industry in the early 2000s and worked with an engineer who personally knew Hans Reiser.
codazoda 5y ago
> NB: Please don't discuss the personalities involved. Ah, but that's all I can think about when I read about reiserfs. For anyone who is unaware, the author, Hans Reiser, killed his wife and hid her body. There was a long and public investigation and he was found guilty. He later produced her body as part of a plea deal.
- samhw 5y ago
- Beltalowda 5y ago
  It's unfortunate that ReiserFS is named after Hans Reiser; other people were working on it too (well before the murder, see e.g. [1] for a crude overview), and there's nothing stopping anyone from maintaining and developing it, no matter what Hans Reiser did. Yet in large part due to the name, it's strongly linked to him :-/ If Theodore Ts'o would have been convicted of murder the ext* filesystems probably would have lived on, as it's not "TsoFS". [1]: https://web.archive.org/web/20060318185107fw_/http://www.namesys.com/devels.html https://web.archive.org/web/20060318185107fw_/http://www.nam...
  - ip26 5y ago
    I feel like there's a small tautology here- who is most likely to name the software package after themselves? A narcissist, of course, and narcissism is a component of sociopathy.
    - karteum 5y ago
      So you also think Linus Torvalds is a narcissist ? And every people who name their project or company after their names are potential sociopaths ? What about all scientists who gave their names to the effects or law of physics (or math formulas) they discovered... ?
      - int_19h 5y ago
        Linus didn't name Linux after himself, another person who distributed it named it after him. Scientists also generally don't name their discoveries after themselves. The honor of getting someone named after yourself is something that your colleagues are supposed to bestow in recognition of achievements - sometimes long after the person in question is long dead.
cestith 5y ago
Personally I've always really liked ReiserFS. The collected storage of small files, the storage of the tails of files, the balanced tree structure, and the fast journaling gave better performance in reads, writes, boot time, and storage efficiency than most file systems. The focus on small files, which were and arguably still are most files on a typical system, was a big key to this. It made it ideal for storing things like configuration files, email in maildir format, email spools, version control repositories, source directories, and many executables. The logical successor was supposed to be btrfs, but that project IMHO may never be ready for production use. All that said, if it's hurting kernel development and almost nobody is using it, perhaps a deprecation cycle is due. Maybe bcachefs is a good replacement? Or perhaps nobody cares about efficiently storing small files these days at all, and we just all go to XFS, ext4, and ZFS. I think dropping it during a short period is detrimental to users. Maybe a two or three version warning is due.
- pmarreck 5y ago
  Hear, hear on replacing reiserfs with bcachefs. Kent Overstreet could use the support, the project looks good, and to my knowledge he is not a murderer.
  - cestith 5y ago
    The salacious details are always part of this discussion and outside of a very carefully scoped conversation like was requested on the list I think that's always going to happen. On just a technical basis, though, I think bcachefs pays a lot of attention to many of the same issues ReiserFS does, gets more current maintenance, and is maintained more along the lines of kernel interfaces other filesystems use. That last one is the strongest point made in the email to the list. The advantage of having the creator, designer, and lead maintainer available among free society is definitely real. Regardless of the murder - even if we can separate the man's technical work from the rest of his life activities - he's not doing a lot of work on his creation while he's in custody. He's certainly not going to be furloughed to hackathons or conferences from a murder sentence.
    - 5y ago
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
indymike 5y ago
ReiserFS has been stable for a long time, and especially useful for spinning metal disks that need to store lots and lots of small files. Not sure that there is a modern replacement that will be able to do this well.
- __s 5y ago
  Note that in the thread what happens is: - someone posts a patch to enable refactoring which reiserfs code was blocking - discussion goes into a deprecation plan, with someone suggesting reiserfs deprecation follow the same as xfs v4. These have formats have year 2038 bugs. Slated for code to be removed come 2030 by starting now
captainmuon 5y ago
I wonder, how does the principle of not breaking userspace mesh with removing of file systems or drivers? I think some of the published cases where userspace would have been "broken" and Linus got angry were fairly minor, as in you might not even need to fix the software, the user just has to be aware of different defaults. Whereas updating a kernel to a version where the filesystem is not supported will definitely render the installation unusable.
- rocqua 5y ago
  I think, technically, file systems are not part of user-space. All of the code for file-systems lives in the Kernel. In some technical sense, the filesystem is just an implementation detail of the kernel for things like 'read', 'write', and 'mmap'. Since this is an implementation detail, it can be considered 'not part of the public API of the kernel'. Put differently, the promise not to break userspace is aimed at developers and not at actual users. The case of changing defaults is then a problem of developers because their programs are all of a sudden behaving differently.
  - TheDong 5y ago
    I disagree that filesystem support is not part of userspace. In userspace, I run "mount -t reiserfs ....", and it mounts a filesystem. If the kernel deletes the reiserfs code, the userspace mount command / kernel 'mount' syscall will fail. That seems like a very clear userspace thing that breaks. Is there a reason that the mount syscall no longer accepting a previously valid argument isn't a userspace breaking change?
    - djur 5y ago
      `mount -t reiserfs` will also fail if ReiserFS isn't built for the running kernel. mount(2) fails with ENODEV and prints an accurate message: "unknown filesystem type 'reiserfs'". This isn't breaking userspace. The syscall and program do the correct thing based on the capabilities of the current kernel. In any case, the ship has long since sailed on removing filesystems from the kernel. The original extfs is no longer available, nor is xiafs, nor are some virtual filesystems like devfs, etc. "A command that used to do something no longer does because the feature is no longer in the kernel" is commonplace in Linux history and is not considered "breaking userspace".
fest 5y ago
What other filesystems have checksums for data? Last time I looked, after a silent SSD failure that I only noticed because some .so files were affected, the only options were btrfs and reiserfs (I think ZFS required a custom kernel at that time). The incident was really eye-opening in how fragile was my data: if .so files were not affected, I would have continued to use the system and erroneous data would silently be propagated to backups.
- pnutjam 5y ago
  I use btrfs with snapshots for my backups. Not only do I get file checksums. The differences in files if I'm hit by ransomware or large-scale file corruption will draw my attention when the disk fills up.
- leephillips 5y ago
  Git? Since I put pretty much everything into Git, it’s like another filesystem overlayed on my normal filesystem.
  - emaginniss 5y ago
    And has the appropriate performance
  - selfhoster11 5y ago
    Git won't work for larger files unless you go with Git-annex or Git-LFS - but that's a lot of faffing about.
- zokier 5y ago
  dm-verity and or dm-integrity https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/admin-guide/device-mapper/verity.html https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/admin-guide/device-ma... https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/admin-guide/device-mapper/dm-integrity.html https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/admin-guide/device-ma...
madphilosopher 5y ago
ReiserFS is my favourite Linux filesystem. I use it where most people just use the default ext4. I was originally attracted to it for the large-number-of-small-files support it had. I appreciate the ability to shrink/grow an existing ReiserFS, which I do often enough as I add new storage to my LVM layouts. I have never lost a ReiserFS filesystem due to corruption, so the tooling seems sufficient for me. I hope it stays in the kernel for a long time.
jordigh 5y ago
"WE DO NOT BREAK USERSPACE" https://lkml.org/lkml/2012/12/23/75 https://lkml.org/lkml/2012/12/23/75 I was surprised to see that Linux has in fact removed other filesystems in the past (and I had to look up the word "senescent"). So the real news to me here is that a somewhat "major" break in userspace is being considered. Sure, ReiserFS might not be getting a lot of new installs, but the fact that people have submitted fixes to it within the past few years means it has some. There are installs of it out there. Wilcox is considering breaking userspace for some users. Linux is famous, famous for keeping backwards compatibility for almost everything forever. The stories of Linux backwards compat are up there with stories of Windows still supporting AUX and CON and other special file names. Is "WE DO NOT BREAK USERSPACE" still worthy enough to be shouted at the top of your email lungs?
- samus 5y ago
  There is a huge difference between introducing glitches in syscalls and deprecating support for something self-contained like a filesystem. The former is sudden and potentially impacts an unspecified, though presumably huge, number of users. The latter is a filesystem that will be put on a deprecation schedule that will literally take half a decade to go through.
- cogman10 5y ago
  I mean, at the end of the day ReiserFS offers very little special compared to the other options already in the kernel. It never had a huge install base and has always been a major maintenance burden on the kernel. AFAIK, BTRFS has everything Reiser has with a far better maintenance and ongoing feature expansion. Really, the only reason to use reiser at this point is because you are dealing with data that you can't, for some reason, move to a new filesystem yet you still want to have updates to the kernel.
- chousuke 5y ago
  Removing a kernel driver does not break userspace. I mean, yes, your filesystem becomes inaccessible, but any programs that you could run if you could access that filesystem by some other means would still function. None of them depend on ReiserFS specifically for their function. Userspace breakage is more about changing interfaces in such a way that applications using that interface change their behaviour somehow. This does not apply to removed drivers.
bjourne 5y ago
Implicit in Wilcox e-mail is the claim that there is a non-trivial cost of keeping reiserfs even when it is not being updated. Cost of keeping resierfs in the kernel > Cost of removing it. A filesystem is like a plugin for the kernel. In theory, it doesn't care what filesystem you use because it only access it using a common plugin interface. So keeping reiserfs in the kernel should cost 0. In practice, the cost is higher. Young developers often don't understand that. Plugins, extensions, modules, backends, what have you, no matter how great the extension mechanism is, you can't completely eliminate the costs.
- samus 5y ago
  In this case, ReiserFS was actually complicating an interface. But interestingly, a patch to resolve just that was published as a follow-up to the message this is all about.
Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
I, for one, don't understand why can't they give Hans a computer and an internet connection and allow him to work on some open-source project.
- watwut 5y ago
  For the same reason why prisons don't allow any other outside activity, whether commercial or not. This would require pretty big prison reform. And that is assuming he has any interest at all doing that.
- londons_explore 5y ago
  There are interesting links to slavery and workhouses by allowing people to do actual labor from prison. There is pretty much no way to allow people to 'volunteer' to do this kind of work without giving someone an incentive to get as many people into prison and using it as a giant slave work camp.
  - ajsnigrutin 5y ago
    Don't prisoners already work in prisons, atleast in US ones? (although my knowledge comes mostly from movies and new articles).
    - londons_explore 5y ago
      I think the US is pretty unique in this regard. Most other countries don't allow this for the moral/ethical reasons in the parent post.
      - d_tr 5y ago
        In Greece you can optionally work while incarcerated, provided there is work to do for some of the prison's facilities, and each workday counts as two regarding your stay there.
  - selfhoster11 5y ago
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
xkjlkly54lk 5y ago
joecool1029 5y ago
Can we just swap it for reiser4/5? It's only got a few people working on it but the FS is faster, has a plugin system for compression and other features, and is all-around just better. Call it shiskinfs if the name is problematic. If paragon can get their cribbed together ntfs driver included in mainline then why can't reiser4 get merged?

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?

fredoralive 5y ago
You can implement filesystems as a kernel module, or use a filesystem-in-userspace option.
Piskvorrr 5y ago
Not really, no. But you'd have to get the source and build the kernel module for the specific kernel it runs on. There are mechanisms to do this, such as DKMS (e.g. Virtualbox does this: it provides its kernel modules' code, OS/user provides kernel source, magic happens and sometimes it even works on the first try); having the module code always present in kernel source (even if it doesn't get built) is more convenient for building, but less convenient for kernel maintainers.
- tombert 5y ago
  That's what I thought; I run zfs-dkms on my server, and I just assumed that other filesystems could do the same.
  - Piskvorrr 5y ago
    Pretty much any kernel module could go this way, yes. The discussion on LKML seems to be focused on "should WE maintain this code?"
michaelt 5y ago
Depends if you want to boot from it, IIRC. Your kernel has to have compiled-in support for the filesystem of the drive you store your kernel modules on.
- j16sdiz 5y ago
  No, Initramfs solved this. As long as you can provide a list of block to the bootloader, everything works as expected. Thats how people boot from ZFS

shaky-carrousel 5y ago

> 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.

__s 5y ago
& in the year 2038 you'll lose your mind?
- emaginniss 5y ago
  That's a generous assessment
- shaky-carrousel 5y ago
  Probably. Alzheimer's runs on the family.
gjm11 5y ago
I don't know about you, but although I too am old and stable I have plenty of data-loss bugs, and I'm running on hardware that needs regular downtime and constant maintenance in order not to fail catastrophically. I therefore don't want my file systems too much like myself.

debug-desperado 5y ago

According to wikipedia Hans might be out on parole next year. As part of his release agreement he should be required to maintain his namesake filesystem.

dzqhz 5y ago

torgoguys 5y ago
What was snarky in the email? (Maybe it went over my head since I only have no reiser knowledge). EDIT: ignore. Sibling asked the same while I typed my question.
- djbusby 5y ago
  On HN you can delete within some time-window.
HideousKojima 5y ago
I'm not seeing the snark in the email? Reiser was infamous for murdering his wife, and I'm guessing Wilcox doesn't want the discussion derailed by Reiser's sordid history.
- dzqhz 5y ago
  >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?
  - tptacek 5y ago
    That's... not snark?
  - marcellus23 5y ago
    Can you point out what you think is snarky there?
    - masklinn 5y ago
      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.

rastapasta42 5y ago

anxrn 5y ago

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 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2131221

daneel_w 5y ago
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.
- lbriner 5y ago
  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?
  - watwut 5y ago
    It is not like he would be the only person capable of contributing into it ever.
  - daneel_w 5y ago
    Everyone understands the implications for a piece of software when its principal developer disappears. Wallowing in the details won't change anything. It's been years already.
- more_corn 5y ago
  Isn’t it relevant though? The sole author and support person is AFK for the foreseeable future.
  - deleted 5y ago

marginalia_nu 5y ago

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.

formerly_proven 5y ago
Stuff like this would probably benefit a lot from using a userspace VFS.
the_mitsuhiko 5y ago
Have you tried btrfs? It has tail packing, block subdivision and inline files.
- hutrdvnj 5y ago
  Is btrfs stable yet?
  - acatton 5y ago
    It's always been. I used it on my servers in "Raid 10" mode and on my daily driver for 3 years now. As long as you don't do BTRFS-level raid 5/6. (Just do lvm-level or md-raid-level raid 5/6) don't do many subvolume with quota. (many subvolumes is fine) It's production ready. I don't know where this "btrfs is not stable" coming from. According to HackerNews, I should have lost my data due to BTRFS 10 times already.
    - pschastain 5y ago
      It never ceases to amaze me how so many people only consider their own experiences as relevant "btrfs is not stable" is coming from people for whom btrfs has not been stable. Why is that so hard to understand?

DocTomoe 5y ago

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 a name attached: ReiserFS. If someone was willing to attach their name to their code, I figured, that must be some quality code. ReiserFS served me well, even though it always was a system lurking in the background. I was not a storage specialist. I was just a guy doing work on a Linux desktop, and ReiserFS "just worked". Occassionally, I put in a new disk, and watched the progression of other fs. Eventually, I switched over to ReiserFSv4. Fast forward a few years, and the whole murder thing happens. Immediately the thing that made ReiserFS stand out for me becomes radioactive - the name is burnt. And I see distros slowly phasing out advertising the option of having a ReiserFS partition. Yes, it was still there when you searched for it, but it didn't feature prominently in the installers anymore. And it is obvious that the code becomes stale - arguably understandable, who would do OSS work on code that is branded the name of a murderer? Twenty years later, I am still a Linux user. The last ReiserFS disk got shredded a year ago. Feels like the end of an era. Lessons learned: Naming matters. If you attach your name to something and want that project to survive, maybe do not commit violent crimes.

daneel_w 5y ago
"... arguably understandable, who would do OSS work on code that is branded the name of a murderer?" Oh, I don't know, the Linux maintainers who have related to the software rationally and sensibly since Reisers' incarceration? Silly and lofty "lesson".
andix 5y ago
That’s why it’s best to only name things after dead people. Less surprises.
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29athrowaway 5y ago

samhw 5y ago
Eh, have you ever tried writing a filesystem?

Frost1x 5y ago

ReiserFS is a conversational litmus test I like to casually and indirectly name drop in technical interview discussions surrounding the world of Linux, file systems, and storage to fish and see if someone actually had been actively working in the domain circa 2000ish when there was a lot of hype and criticism bubbling surrounding performance with large sets of small files. Admittedly, it's not a great signal if the candidate hadn't heard of it or used it depending on their career length because plenty avoided it and happily lived in other FS worlds or avoided certain hype, but it's a fairly good positive signal if someone actually starts talking about it knowledgably in some way regardless of it on positive or critical notes--just have to keep survivorship and confirmation biases actively in mind when weighing these things.

cogman10 5y ago
Why not update to more modern FSes like BTRFS, XFS, or ZFS? BTRFS, in particular, is pretty heavily inspired by Reiser. I'm not entirely sure what's gained by asking a candidate about FAT16.
- hulitu 5y ago
  Is XFS stable ? I tried reiserfs, jfs and xfs at the beginning and stuck with jfs because reiserfs would eat a lot of processor power and xfs would not run fsck when the power got interrupted which resulted in a corrupted filesystem.
  - cogman10 5y ago
    It was added to the kernel in 2004. It's stable. That being said, IMO, BTRFS and ZFS are better file systems.
ericbarrett 5y ago
Sadly, I don't think this is a good signal for anything anymore except being past a certain age and having been around Linux at the time. ReiserFS hasn't been relevant for fifteen years, as during its heydey it was quite unstable and after the incident development stopped completely. I say this as somebody who was in the storage industry in the early 2000s and worked with an engineer who personally knew Hans Reiser.

codazoda 5y ago

> NB: Please don't discuss the personalities involved. Ah, but that's all I can think about when I read about reiserfs. For anyone who is unaware, the author, Hans Reiser, killed his wife and hid her body. There was a long and public investigation and he was found guilty. He later produced her body as part of a plea deal.

samhw 5y ago
Beltalowda 5y ago
It's unfortunate that ReiserFS is named after Hans Reiser; other people were working on it too (well before the murder, see e.g. [1] for a crude overview), and there's nothing stopping anyone from maintaining and developing it, no matter what Hans Reiser did. Yet in large part due to the name, it's strongly linked to him :-/ If Theodore Ts'o would have been convicted of murder the ext* filesystems probably would have lived on, as it's not "TsoFS". [1]: https://web.archive.org/web/20060318185107fw_/http://www.namesys.com/devels.html https://web.archive.org/web/20060318185107fw_/http://www.nam...
- ip26 5y ago
  I feel like there's a small tautology here- who is most likely to name the software package after themselves? A narcissist, of course, and narcissism is a component of sociopathy.
  - karteum 5y ago
    So you also think Linus Torvalds is a narcissist ? And every people who name their project or company after their names are potential sociopaths ? What about all scientists who gave their names to the effects or law of physics (or math formulas) they discovered... ?
    - int_19h 5y ago
      Linus didn't name Linux after himself, another person who distributed it named it after him. Scientists also generally don't name their discoveries after themselves. The honor of getting someone named after yourself is something that your colleagues are supposed to bestow in recognition of achievements - sometimes long after the person in question is long dead.

cestith 5y ago

Personally I've always really liked ReiserFS. The collected storage of small files, the storage of the tails of files, the balanced tree structure, and the fast journaling gave better performance in reads, writes, boot time, and storage efficiency than most file systems. The focus on small files, which were and arguably still are most files on a typical system, was a big key to this. It made it ideal for storing things like configuration files, email in maildir format, email spools, version control repositories, source directories, and many executables. The logical successor was supposed to be btrfs, but that project IMHO may never be ready for production use. All that said, if it's hurting kernel development and almost nobody is using it, perhaps a deprecation cycle is due. Maybe bcachefs is a good replacement? Or perhaps nobody cares about efficiently storing small files these days at all, and we just all go to XFS, ext4, and ZFS. I think dropping it during a short period is detrimental to users. Maybe a two or three version warning is due.

pmarreck 5y ago
Hear, hear on replacing reiserfs with bcachefs. Kent Overstreet could use the support, the project looks good, and to my knowledge he is not a murderer.
- cestith 5y ago
  The salacious details are always part of this discussion and outside of a very carefully scoped conversation like was requested on the list I think that's always going to happen. On just a technical basis, though, I think bcachefs pays a lot of attention to many of the same issues ReiserFS does, gets more current maintenance, and is maintained more along the lines of kernel interfaces other filesystems use. That last one is the strongest point made in the email to the list. The advantage of having the creator, designer, and lead maintainer available among free society is definitely real. Regardless of the murder - even if we can separate the man's technical work from the rest of his life activities - he's not doing a lot of work on his creation while he's in custody. He's certainly not going to be furloughed to hackathons or conferences from a murder sentence.
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indymike 5y ago

ReiserFS has been stable for a long time, and especially useful for spinning metal disks that need to store lots and lots of small files. Not sure that there is a modern replacement that will be able to do this well.

__s 5y ago
Note that in the thread what happens is: - someone posts a patch to enable refactoring which reiserfs code was blocking - discussion goes into a deprecation plan, with someone suggesting reiserfs deprecation follow the same as xfs v4. These have formats have year 2038 bugs. Slated for code to be removed come 2030 by starting now

captainmuon 5y ago

I wonder, how does the principle of not breaking userspace mesh with removing of file systems or drivers? I think some of the published cases where userspace would have been "broken" and Linus got angry were fairly minor, as in you might not even need to fix the software, the user just has to be aware of different defaults. Whereas updating a kernel to a version where the filesystem is not supported will definitely render the installation unusable.

rocqua 5y ago
I think, technically, file systems are not part of user-space. All of the code for file-systems lives in the Kernel. In some technical sense, the filesystem is just an implementation detail of the kernel for things like 'read', 'write', and 'mmap'. Since this is an implementation detail, it can be considered 'not part of the public API of the kernel'. Put differently, the promise not to break userspace is aimed at developers and not at actual users. The case of changing defaults is then a problem of developers because their programs are all of a sudden behaving differently.
- TheDong 5y ago
  I disagree that filesystem support is not part of userspace. In userspace, I run "mount -t reiserfs ....", and it mounts a filesystem. If the kernel deletes the reiserfs code, the userspace mount command / kernel 'mount' syscall will fail. That seems like a very clear userspace thing that breaks. Is there a reason that the mount syscall no longer accepting a previously valid argument isn't a userspace breaking change?
  - djur 5y ago
    `mount -t reiserfs` will also fail if ReiserFS isn't built for the running kernel. mount(2) fails with ENODEV and prints an accurate message: "unknown filesystem type 'reiserfs'". This isn't breaking userspace. The syscall and program do the correct thing based on the capabilities of the current kernel. In any case, the ship has long since sailed on removing filesystems from the kernel. The original extfs is no longer available, nor is xiafs, nor are some virtual filesystems like devfs, etc. "A command that used to do something no longer does because the feature is no longer in the kernel" is commonplace in Linux history and is not considered "breaking userspace".

fest 5y ago

What other filesystems have checksums for data? Last time I looked, after a silent SSD failure that I only noticed because some .so files were affected, the only options were btrfs and reiserfs (I think ZFS required a custom kernel at that time). The incident was really eye-opening in how fragile was my data: if .so files were not affected, I would have continued to use the system and erroneous data would silently be propagated to backups.

pnutjam 5y ago
I use btrfs with snapshots for my backups. Not only do I get file checksums. The differences in files if I'm hit by ransomware or large-scale file corruption will draw my attention when the disk fills up.
leephillips 5y ago
Git? Since I put pretty much everything into Git, it’s like another filesystem overlayed on my normal filesystem.
- emaginniss 5y ago
  And has the appropriate performance
- selfhoster11 5y ago
  Git won't work for larger files unless you go with Git-annex or Git-LFS - but that's a lot of faffing about.
zokier 5y ago
dm-verity and or dm-integrity https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/admin-guide/device-mapper/verity.html https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/admin-guide/device-ma... https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/admin-guide/device-mapper/dm-integrity.html https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/admin-guide/device-ma...

madphilosopher 5y ago

ReiserFS is my favourite Linux filesystem. I use it where most people just use the default ext4. I was originally attracted to it for the large-number-of-small-files support it had. I appreciate the ability to shrink/grow an existing ReiserFS, which I do often enough as I add new storage to my LVM layouts. I have never lost a ReiserFS filesystem due to corruption, so the tooling seems sufficient for me. I hope it stays in the kernel for a long time.

jordigh 5y ago

"WE DO NOT BREAK USERSPACE" https://lkml.org/lkml/2012/12/23/75 https://lkml.org/lkml/2012/12/23/75 I was surprised to see that Linux has in fact removed other filesystems in the past (and I had to look up the word "senescent"). So the real news to me here is that a somewhat "major" break in userspace is being considered. Sure, ReiserFS might not be getting a lot of new installs, but the fact that people have submitted fixes to it within the past few years means it has some. There are installs of it out there. Wilcox is considering breaking userspace for some users. Linux is famous, famous for keeping backwards compatibility for almost everything forever. The stories of Linux backwards compat are up there with stories of Windows still supporting AUX and CON and other special file names. Is "WE DO NOT BREAK USERSPACE" still worthy enough to be shouted at the top of your email lungs?

samus 5y ago
There is a huge difference between introducing glitches in syscalls and deprecating support for something self-contained like a filesystem. The former is sudden and potentially impacts an unspecified, though presumably huge, number of users. The latter is a filesystem that will be put on a deprecation schedule that will literally take half a decade to go through.
cogman10 5y ago
I mean, at the end of the day ReiserFS offers very little special compared to the other options already in the kernel. It never had a huge install base and has always been a major maintenance burden on the kernel. AFAIK, BTRFS has everything Reiser has with a far better maintenance and ongoing feature expansion. Really, the only reason to use reiser at this point is because you are dealing with data that you can't, for some reason, move to a new filesystem yet you still want to have updates to the kernel.
chousuke 5y ago
Removing a kernel driver does not break userspace. I mean, yes, your filesystem becomes inaccessible, but any programs that you could run if you could access that filesystem by some other means would still function. None of them depend on ReiserFS specifically for their function. Userspace breakage is more about changing interfaces in such a way that applications using that interface change their behaviour somehow. This does not apply to removed drivers.

bjourne 5y ago

Implicit in Wilcox e-mail is the claim that there is a non-trivial cost of keeping reiserfs even when it is not being updated. Cost of keeping resierfs in the kernel > Cost of removing it. A filesystem is like a plugin for the kernel. In theory, it doesn't care what filesystem you use because it only access it using a common plugin interface. So keeping reiserfs in the kernel should cost 0. In practice, the cost is higher. Young developers often don't understand that. Plugins, extensions, modules, backends, what have you, no matter how great the extension mechanism is, you can't completely eliminate the costs.

samus 5y ago
In this case, ReiserFS was actually complicating an interface. But interestingly, a patch to resolve just that was published as a follow-up to the message this is all about.

Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago

I, for one, don't understand why can't they give Hans a computer and an internet connection and allow him to work on some open-source project.

watwut 5y ago
For the same reason why prisons don't allow any other outside activity, whether commercial or not. This would require pretty big prison reform. And that is assuming he has any interest at all doing that.
londons_explore 5y ago
There are interesting links to slavery and workhouses by allowing people to do actual labor from prison. There is pretty much no way to allow people to 'volunteer' to do this kind of work without giving someone an incentive to get as many people into prison and using it as a giant slave work camp.
- ajsnigrutin 5y ago
  Don't prisoners already work in prisons, atleast in US ones? (although my knowledge comes mostly from movies and new articles).
  - londons_explore 5y ago
    I think the US is pretty unique in this regard. Most other countries don't allow this for the moral/ethical reasons in the parent post.
    - d_tr 5y ago
      In Greece you can optionally work while incarcerated, provided there is work to do for some of the prison's facilities, and each workday counts as two regarding your stay there.
- selfhoster11 5y ago

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joecool1029 5y ago

Can we just swap it for reiser4/5? It's only got a few people working on it but the FS is faster, has a plugin system for compression and other features, and is all-around just better. Call it shiskinfs if the name is problematic. If paragon can get their cribbed together ntfs driver included in mainline then why can't reiser4 get merged?