[vdr] Re: Choice of Filesystem for VDR

[Matthias Schniedermeyer <ms@citd.de>]

On 12.08.2004 21:16, Philip Lawatsch wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> 
> I do hope that this is not too off topic to discuss here, but I'd really 
> like to know what experiences you have with the various filesystems and vdr.

For my VDR-boxes i have used ext2 for (nearly) 4 years now.

With "normal" uptimes of > 0,5year i can live with a fsck about every 6
month. (And "temporary" recording hdds have only 80GB. And because it is
normaly(tm) empty even when it has to do a fsck, it doesn't take very
long)

As ext2 doesn't do journaling (btw. did you DISABLE the write cache on
your HDD, most HDDs have this enabled? (All) Journaling Filesystems
don't like the write cache at all. With write cache enabled there is a
high(tm) probability that you damage your filesystem (even if it is
journaled) when your system crashes, you have a power outage or you
switch of the computer without proper shutdown (and you may get problems
if you shutdown correctly, but you distribution doesn't send a "write
back your cache"-command to your hdd before switching off)) it doesn't
wast performance for doing the journal.

And since disabling the write cache harms performance very much (the HDD
has to seek much more than with write cache enabled) you'd have to place
the journal on another physical disc to not harm the performance.

Or don't use a journaling filesystem. When you computer crashed while
recording, the recording(s) (is/are) garbage with or without a
journaling filesystem. That your system is back up much faster isn't
something that would be important in my eyes. Let alone that my system
doesn't start itself automaticly. (loading driver and starting vdr every
half a year is acceptable :-)  )




Bis denn

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