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isn't ReiserFS less reliable than Ext3 on a mission critical server?

UnitedLinux is supposed to be first and foremost a server OS...i thought Reiser wasn't quite stable enough for that yet

A bit OT: See that today we only pretty much had OSS and linux news? As I said, DEPENDS on the day. I wish people would stop bitching for "too much windows news, is this a windows-centric site?". To answer that, yes, we are. As we are also Linux-centric, apple-centric, bsd-centric etc etc. **Depends on what news are available each day.** We exist for reporting on ALL OSes.

And now back on topic, thanks for the nice review Mario.
Anyone knows if UnitedLinux has any additional gui tools for configuring servers etc?

ReiserFS is just as stable as ext3, and faster as well, beginning with the 2.4.18 kernel. I personally cannot stand ext3.

I don't know if it's the first distro to recognize the BeOS (XFS) partition but if it's then that's SuSE credit, not United Linux.

(About Windows or Linux centered I can't see what's the big deal since all inovation has come from Windows, not Linux which just cones Windows all along).

;o)))) let the flamewars begin!


chicobaud says: I don't know if it's the first distro to recognize the BeOS (XFS) partition but if it's then that's SuSE credit, not United Linux.
Since this version of YAST is part of UnitedLinux, I would say that it's just semantics. But I have no strong opinion on the matter.

OK, I myself don't have an insight into how advanced Reiser FS is, but: If I go through the FAQ of the Gentoo-site, they specifically say that Reiser FS is NOT production ready. My layman's conclusion was that people who are that much in the know and capable to put together one of the most anticipated distros ought to know whether or not a file system is ready for the wild... flame away :-)

I cant believe that...

I have bought every SuSE version from 6.4 to 8.0 (well, almost every, I skipped 7.2) and hardware detection became better with every release.

From my experience SuSE´s Yast(2) has the best hardware detection when it comes to "everyday-standard devices" like graphic, sound, network, removable media, etc., second only to Mandrake which even detects ISA (!) Sound- and Networking cards (!!).

My PC has a SoundBlaster 128 PCI, a NE2000 networking chip, onboard sound, usb, scsi, and all of them were reliably detected since Yast2 was introduced with Version 7.0.

I just cant believe that UnitedLinux ships with a version that inferior to what 8.0 has ??!

SB128 not detected?? Networking problems?? Strange, indeed... Perhaps this is because of the beta status, but as I said: I almost cant believe hearing that...

Have you ever compared running an fsck with ext3 to reiserfs? Reiserfs easily is quicker.

The problem with Reiserfs is that many people who have had corruption, had shit-house chipsets. You know the cheap crappy ones from VIA that are held together with two pieces of string and a rubber band. Hence, the rumour went around that reiserfs is "unstable" and "not ready for production".

I have two machines. A PIII with a BX440 Chipset + my personal speed demon, dual Xeon processor on a ServerWorks chipset motherboard. Both are rock solid and have never caused any filesystem corruption.

Conclusion: You pay for what you get. Cheap motherboard with cheap chipset = crap reliability.

Who knows, maybe I'm just jinxed. Or my mobo is not-so-good. BeOS and Caldra OpenDesktop 2.4 (IIRC) detected my soundcard okidoki, but it's still possible that I have a different revision of the chipset from the one you have. Could you do an lsmod and post the output here?
That onboard NE2000 you have, is it PCI or ISA? Mine is ISA, and it's never detected, but I don't really expect it to be. Actually, the bug in YAST's networking setup is not related to the card's detection but to the management of the network driver configuration vs. ethernet interface configuration. The card configuration keeps disappearing, even though the network comes up OK once I edited /etc/modules.conf

The UnitLinux installation screenshots look exactly like
the installation screens of SuSE 8.1 I've installed yesterday. The only difference I could see are the UnitedLinux logos on the screenshots.

It's strange that the author experiences problems with his sound card cause I use the same soundcard and SuSE 8.1 discovered and configured it without any problem.

Oh, right, ISA cards are not detected anymore by Yast. I have a PCI networking card (extra card, not onboard, it just uses the ne2000 module).

Mandrake detects ISA cards well, it first scans for PCI cards, then asks if you have more. When answering yes, you must run some commandline tool after first boot so the card gets set up.

Driver for my SB128 is the normal es1371.
modules.conf:
alias sound-slot-0 es1371
and then some additional stuff to load oss emulation as well.

And here is more info on my hardware:

amd:~ # lsmod
Module Size Used by Not tainted
es1370 25580 0 (autoclean)
gameport 1420 0 (autoclean) [es1370]
soundcore 3396 0 (autoclean) [es1370]
videodev 5600 0 (autoclean)
st 26924 0 (autoclean) (unused)
sr_mod 13432 0 (autoclean)
cdrom 26400 0 (autoclean) [sr_mod]
sg 27904 0 (autoclean)
ipv6 138964 -1 (autoclean)
ne 6592 1
8390 6096 0 [ne]
isa-pnp 29664 0 [ne]
nls_iso8859-1 2812 2 (autoclean)
nls_cp437 4316 2 (autoclean)
vfat 9620 2 (autoclean)
fat 30584 0 (autoclean) [vfat]
lvm-mod 62976 0 (autoclean)
ide-scsi 7920 0
amd:~ # grep es1370 /etc/modules.conf
alias char-major-14 es1370
amd:~ # grep eth0 /etc/modules.conf
#alias eth0 nvnet
alias eth0 ne
options eth0 io=0x340
amd:~ # lspci
00:00.0 Host bridge: Acer Laboratories Inc. [ALi] M1541 (rev 04)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Acer Laboratories Inc. [ALi] M1541 PCI to AGP Controller (re
v 04)
00:03.0 Bridge: Acer Laboratories Inc. [ALi] M7101 PMU
00:07.0 ISA bridge: Acer Laboratories Inc. [ALi] M1533 PCI to ISA Bridge [Aladdi
n IV] (rev c3)
00:0a.0 Multimedia audio controller: Ensoniq ES1370 [AudioPCI] (rev 01)
00:0f.0 IDE interface: Acer Laboratories Inc. [ALi] M5229 IDE (rev c1)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation NV5 [Riva TnT2 Ultra] (rev
11)
amd:~ #

BeOS (XFS)???

Anonymous, those Gentoo FAQs also state that since Kernel 2.4.18 ReiserFS support can be considered stable. I'm using ReiserFS for quite some time now (first SuSE 8, now Gentoo 1.4 RC1), don't have to report any problems.

(About Windows or Linux centered I can't see what's the big deal since all inovation has come from Windows, not Linux which just cones Windows all along).

You really know how to use sarcasm in flame wars )

Info

Reiserfs and ext3 journal differently (ext3 journals more)
How fast the two systems are depends on the file sizes - apparently reiser is significantly faster with loads of small files

Each have different characteristics so whichever one is "better" depends on your needs

This review falls into that same old Linux Review Trap: That is, the reviewer talks about the install much more than he talks about actual usage. How does the distro work day to day? is it slow? does it have user quirks? Etc and so on.

well first he said he was a "UNIX installation developer" and that this part would interest him the most and that he would focus more on this...so what's your problem?


slow? user quirks?
it's a server, who cares about desktop performance, on top of that it's a beta and bound to have problems

as to the actual review i would like to point out two things...

you talk about "new" windows/beos converts to this OS...
but remember this particular distro is not intended for this crowd...it's intended for people who know what they are doing, or how will be paying UL(one of them anyway) for support and installation roll outs.

You bring up a valid point and in principle I agree with you. I would agree even more if these were usability issues, but they are bugs, and the netcard bug is rather serious which I am confident will be solved.
I defninitely would urge anyone who buys UL to arm him/herself with a solid support contract. As I said, all services, except ssh and XDM are off by default, and yast does not, at least in this incarnation, allow for easy administration of them. So unless you know what you are doing you migh be stuck with a Linux box that does almost nothing.

Just a quick tip for those who downloaded UL and installed it: if you want to enable Telnet, you have to edit /etc/inetd.conf and uncomment the line with the telnet daemon, and then run inetd to read in the new changes. No need to edit /etc/services, because it's OK, generally speaking.
Same goes for the other services, but remember that FTP and Apache need serious configging.
Another tip about Telnet: you can't telnet as root even after you did the above procedure, you must either create a non-root user for ths purpose or you can rename /etc/securetty - something that good admins don't do, except when noone is watching ;o)

they specifically say that Reiser FS is NOT production ready

That's not right, ReiserFS is ready and it's the fastest after JFS.

I don't know if it's the first distro to recognize the BeOS (XFS) partition but if it's then that's SuSE credit, not United
Linux

BeOS uses BFS, not XFS.

United Linux properly detected and installed my Belkin Instant Wireless Card and SuSE Linux 8.0 didn't. Does anybody know if it will detect in SuSE Linux 8.1?

Brandon

Run alsaconf to detect your sound card in United Linux. Its a little strange that Yast doesn't have the same features as it does in SuSE 8.0 but then again this is a beta.

Does it come with a manual?

There are the man pages and the info pages, which is all the documentation I use. If you meant a hardcopy version (i.e. dead-tree documentation), you should know that I have downloaded the .iso images of the two installtion CDs, so of course, I have no books/papar manuals for UnitedLinux beta.

Hey, one interesting bit of information, which I didn't mention in the article, and in hindsight I regret: YAST2 is not accessible from either the KDE or Gnome menus, you have to type "yast2" in a terminal window while in some window manager. This certainly shows tha the product is a beta :o)

How'd you try suse 8.1? not out yet I thought...

But anyway, I've NEVER had a problem with reiserfs. It's especially going to be of benefit for systems that use lots of small files; the people that make it actually encourage the use of the filesystem like some sort of flat database just because the performance is so good for that.

Also, one more note about the Yast2 vid setup with nvidia cards... if UL holds to the same tradition as suse 8.0, you'll find that when you use the online update system (YOU --- which works damned well) for the first time, it will offer you the option of allowing it to automatically go get the REAL nvidia drivers from the nvidia site, with which it will then replace the "license unencumbered" driver used during installation. In my experience, totally bulletproof and automatic. I was amazed. Then again, my sound and other stuff generally always was set up properly by Yast2 as well...

1.)
Is there anybody having tried UL installation from HD ?
YAST2 doesn't find any sw configuration data.

2.)
The floppy boot doesn't recognise my RTL network card.

Bevallom, nem vagyok biztos hogy ez a UL beta instala'lhato ilyen uton. Attol tartok, Yast arra sza'mit hogy a CD-röl boot-olsz.

(Söt, manapsa'g csak Slackware Linux-ra bizok ha HD instalalast akarok csinalni.)

Én is így gondoltam, csak gond volt a CD megírásánál.

the 4GB in the kernel version refers to the amount of core the kernel can address ;-)