Recommended filesystem?

[hanumanji]

Greetings. I am new to Linux and new to Amahi. I am converting my former Windows Home Server box to Amahi. I will be adding hard drives to my system and changing the shares to point to them. I will be sharing with OS X and XP systems, but only backing up the OS X system. What is the recommended filesystem to use for these drives?
Thanks!

[moredruid]

you can choose almost any type of filesystem and run linux, most distro's use ext3 or reiserfs.

ext3 is a well performing journaling filesystem, tried and tested.
reiserfs is in some cases faster (also journaling), but development has stalled lately.

I recommend using ext3, this will serve you well enough.

as for the backup etc., this will be transparent to the client systems. OS X will mount your shares using samba (CIFS) fine. You can also create a small script for automounting your drives on a Mac.
Go to Programs, Applescript
Add an applescript and copy the below stuff in it:

Code: Select all

tell application "Finder" mount volume "smb://WORKGROUP;username:password@hda/<directory>" end tell

be careful: you will need to set the WORKGROUP, username & password correctly! You can replace <directory> with music, pictures, movies or a share you've created yourself.
save the file as an executable in your home folder.
set it ro run everytime you logon to your computer in System preferences -> Accounts -> Login item -> add the file you've just created.
reboot your Mac to see if the drive comes up at boot.

[hanumanji]

thanks for that great information! i could have used that applescript a long time ago when i was running my windows home server! i manually mounted shares every logon
i am using gparted to format the data drive. it looks like i need to create a partition table before i can format it. the default table type is msdos. do i want to use that or some other type?

[cpg]

msdos is not good for many reasons (cannot take files over 2gb, not journaled, etc.).

use ext3. tried and tested. i never lost data on ext3.

[relrobber]

a little late to the party but...i use xfs for my storage partitions. handles deleting of large files better than ext3.

[cpg]

i just tried xfs for the first time and it's great with large files being deleted (iso files, vobs, etc.).

other files playing from the same server no longer freeze while the delete takes place. great tip!