[mythtv-users] What is the problem with ReiserFS that makes it unsuitable for MythTV?

Scott Alfter mythtv at salfter.dyndns.org
Tue Feb 5 07:17:38 UTC 2008


While chasing down problems with corrupted recordings (most commonly with HD 
recordings over FireWire from my cable box, though the odd PVR-500 recording 
gets glitchy too), I decided to try switching to a different filesystem.  I 
googled for "best filesystem for mythtv" and got the MythTV installation howto, 
which I hadn't checked in ages.

I'm currently copying everything to a USB-connected hard drive that serves as 
my long-term video storage before I reformat the drive with the MythTV video 
files.  I checked to see what filesystem it's currently using...turns out it's 
ReiserFS 3.6.  Turns out the howto has this warning:

   NOTE: You must not use ReiserFS v3 for your recordings. You will get
   corrupted recordings if you do.

There's also mention of ReiserFS having problems dealing with large files, but 
mention of it is lumped in with FAT (which doesn't support large files at all). 
    I know ext3 takes a long time to delete large files, which is why I didn't 
use it for MythTV storage (though I use it for the root and boot filesystems). 
  ReiserFS doesn't appear to have that problem at least, and you can create 
large files in it.  What other things could there be about ReiserFS that 
warrant the aforementioned notice that I've previously missed?

I'm on the fence as to whether to go with JFS or XFS (just compiled both as 
modules and added the relevant mkfs/fsck/etc. tools).  I've tried JFS in the 
past...seem to recall it was usually OK, though it sometimes needed to be 
manually fsck'd to get it running right after a reset or power outage.  I don't 
think I've ever used XFS for anything.  Which of these would be the better way 
to go?

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