Is using ext4 a no-brainer?

av_lin · #1 10th June 2009, 02:14 AM

I am doing a single OS install and I wasn't even aware of the existance of ext4 until 30 minutes ago. Is using it basically a no-brainer or is there some slight risk associated with it?

Peacepunk · #2 10th June 2009, 02:36 AM

It is still not recommended for production use - I use ext3 for classic, spinning drives and ext2 for ssd's, flash/nand whatever.. Now if you check the Ubuntu forums, the seemingly all installed 9.04 on ext4. There are really people out there that can't refrain themselves... And I haven't noticed huge panics or alarms.

I say don't, if anything valuable is to reside on your drives, and do if you want to check it out and/or participating in debugging the new ext4 filesystem...

Enjoy!

scottro · #3 10th June 2009, 02:41 AM

I've been using it on several test machines without issue. I might have just been lucky, and none of these machines has anything important. I've been using it with both Fedora and Ubuntu without ill effects.

That being said, however, it's still relatively new. You might want to wait awhile and see what happens, but so far, as Peacepunk said, I haven't heard any screams of rage.

The only thing to keep in mind is that Fedora's grub can't boot ext4. This seems to be getting people with the live CDs which require an ext2 or 3 /boot and ext4 / (because it's actually a complete O/S image, it has to install on ext4.)

However, with the DVD or installation CD set, that's not an issue, you can install ext3.

It does seem to be so far, so good, but of course, that's what the man said after jumping off the cliff.

damentz · #4 10th June 2009, 02:41 AM

I've been running it since January as root, haven't had a filesystem corruption yet. Of course, everyone has their own special case like throwing their drive in the dryer or pegging all the bits with a giant magnet - I haven't done any of those yet

JN4OldSchool · #5 10th June 2009, 02:42 AM

I have been running it in 4 mint installs and now my arch install with no problems. For what it's worth...

CiaW · #6 10th June 2009, 05:43 AM

Thought I'd jump in here, since this has been a question in the back of my mind too... though my inclination is to stick with ext3 all the way, being an occasional chicken and all. Would it be possible / advisable to have /boot as ext3, /home also as ext3 and / only as ext 4? I have only a 20gig drive; and my current (F7) set-up has just the above 3 partitions in addition to swap.

On F7, I have about 80% of a 100mb /boot partition free, do I need to increase it to about 150mb? I guess that question isn't part of the ext3 vs 4 discussion; but thought I'd throw it in there...

Thanks.

scottro · #7 10th June 2009, 10:02 AM

200 MB would probably be better if it can be easily done. I'm guessing this due to the fact that the default is now 200. <shrug>.

RahulSundaram · #8 10th June 2009, 10:21 AM

Hi,

200 MB is also better in case you are using preupgrade

CiaW · #9 11th June 2009, 05:11 AM

Thanks for the info on the /boot size, and after some research I feel comfortable using ext4 for the rest when I get my DVD.

sonoran · #10 11th June 2009, 06:00 AM

Hi-
I have a 70 meg /boot partition for Fedora 11, and with 3 kernels and associated files only half the partition is being used. I have not used preupgrade and would not try it with so little space.

Back on topic - been using ext 4 on 2 systems since December without a hitch, including a power failure last week from which Fedora recovered very nicely with no data loss.