The time has finally come. Linux guys, please come help me set up my RAID5 fileserver

[peterb]

For the backup drive? No reason at all - Linux will read and write to NTFS filesystems. However for the OS system itself, you should be using ext3 or one of the other Linux filesystems that were discussed earlier.

But for starters - you should find ext3 fine - its a good all round filesystem. However you can always add partitions with other file systems if you feel the need. You can have a partition with NTFS on as well. (As an example - my dual boot laptop has3 NTFS partitions for Windows, and 3 ext3 partitions for Linux. The NTFS partitions are mounted under the linux system so I can access those files when the system is booted to Linux - which is 90% of the time!

[SiM]

For the backup drive? No reason at all - Linux will read and write to NTFS filesystems. However for the OS system itself, you should be using ext3 or one of the other Linux filesystems that were discussed earlier.

But for starters - you should find ext3 fine - its a good all round filesystem. However you can always add partitions with other file systems if you feel the need. You can have a partition with NTFS on as well. (As an example - my dual boot laptop has3 NTFS partitions for Windows, and 3 ext3 partitions for Linux. The NTFS partitions are mounted under the linux system so I can access those files when the system is booted to Linux - which is 90% of the time!

I meant the internal, shared partitions as NTFS. So the plan now is to have the OS installed on a ext3 parition and then format the rest of the drives as NTFS. External backup will be NTFS too.

[aidanjt]

ntfs-3g (the FUSE userspace filesystem implimentation on Linux) is rather new, and as such, performance and filesystem sanity can't be garanteed 100%. So it'll be ok for backups, but I would in no way recommend it's use for frequent data storage and retrieval, on top of that, mixing NTFS ACLs and UNIX permissions and optionally POSIX ACLs isn't pretty and doesn't map well or at all.

[SiM]

ntfs-3g (the FUSE userspace filesystem implimentation on Linux) is rather new, and as such, performance and filesystem sanity can't be garanteed 100%. So it'll be ok for backups, but I would in no way recommend it's use for frequent data storage and retrieval, on top of that, mixing NTFS ACLs and UNIX permissions and optionally POSIX ACLs isn't pretty and doesn't map well or at all.

Hmmm, are you sure its that too new? it is "stable" according to their site and has been in development for 2 years...

Anyway I have found this... so I will go with ext3 then...

[peterb]

Hmmm, are you sure its that too new? it is "stable" according to their site and has been in development for 2 years...

Anyway I have found this... so I will go with ext3 then...

I've found the fuse drivers to be stable and haven't had any problems with them. If you are using a separate partition for /home (for the shared drive) it would make more sense to keep them as ext3 - the client machines neither know nor care what the underlying structure is. I cited the laptop because it was dual boot.

But if you wnat to access the external (USB?) backuo drive from a Windows machine - then it makes good sense to use NTFS for that (or if you aren't bothered about preserving file permissions or technical security isn't an issue, you could use FAT 32 (bearing in mind the maximum file size is 2GB)

BTW - while Gparted/parted won't install an NTFS file system, and I don't know if mkfs will (with the fuise ntfs-3g drivers) so you would have to create the FS ('format') on a native platform - ie, a windows machine)

[aidanjt]

Hmmm, are you sure its that too new? it is "stable" according to their site and has been in development for 2 years...

Anyway I have found this... so I will go with ext3 then...

Compared to the likes of ext3 and friends, it's very new. While it's a lot more stable than the in-kernel NTFS driver in terms of writes, I still wouldn't stake all my data on it.

[SiM]

OK, so will do ext3 OS partitions and ext3 share partitions. Share independent to all \ , \home etc. Will mount shared partitions as \home\share\1 etc.
External back up will be NTFS, formatted on windows.

Cheers guys, I can forsee this working now

Have either of you tried Ext2 Installable File System For Windows?

[aidanjt]

I have, it isn't pretty, but it can come in handy for reading data off an ext2/3 filesystem, I wouldn't use it for heavy writting though.

[directhex]

OK, so will do ext3 OS partitions and ext3 share partitions. Share independent to all \ , \home etc. Will mount shared partitions as \home\share\1 etc.
External back up will be NTFS, formatted on windows.

Cheers guys, I can forsee this working now

Have either of you tried Ext2 Installable File System For Windows?

works well enough for me

terrifyingly, XP uses the drive with the most free space for anything that comes through windows update - meaning my xpsp3 install was running off an ext3 partition...

[SiM]

Thanks for all your help guys... Its set up and its perfect! Just a couple of small issues that need ironing out

This is what I get:



Was hoping for a bit more than as the drives can do over 90mb/s, but it will do nicely

[aidanjt]

That's pretty sweet

[SiM]

That's pretty sweet

Cheers

One of my shared partitions is over 30% non-contiguous, but its completely empty! What does that mean?

[jackvdbuk]

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=515092

seems to mean that the files are fragmented, but as its completely empty... ill leave the pr0s to answer that