File system
The Reiser4 File System has the following basic features:
- It was designed with high-security and high-speed in mind.
- It's fast, in former times it was one of the fastest in some tests.
- It uses B+- or B*-trees as the basic data structures.
- It uses B*-trees in conjunction with dancing trees for space efficient packing and handling of small files.
- It uses B+- or B*-trees for handling of large files.
- Its disk-layout is dynamically optimized through allocate-on- flush/delayed allocation.
- Its atomicity supports transactions, so that file system oper- ations entirely occur.
- Metadata is stored as sub-files, so a file is actually a folder and a file, and metadata can be attached to any other file.
- It has an efficient journaling through wandering logs.
- It features a flexible plug-in system concept, though this was only shown prototypically.
- It supports transparent compression.
- It was mature until the year 2010.
Sources
The patch and the supporting software libraries are only listed for historical and scientifical reasons. Eventually, newer patches and libraries are available.
Reiser4 Installation
Descriptions of the different installation steps are given on the following webpages: