Running eclipse based apps on Fedora 9 x86_64

Many IBM applications are based on eclipse for i386 architectures. Just some examples: Lotus Notes, Sametime, Symphony, IES (IBM eclipse SDK). However, the Fedora 9 for x86_64 architectures does not install any 32 bits libraries anymore. How shall these applications now run on Fedora 9?

xfs forgetful?

I have been using xfs for some months now. Somewhere I had read about advantages of xfs and got convinced that I should store my files on that file system (sorry, I don’t remember the references anymore).

Today it happened that, suddenly, eclipse complained that all the files I was editing did not exist anymore on the workspace and that the file view was out of sync with the file system. Probably, a bug of new Ganymede version, I thought. But in sequence, everything crashed: KDE, firefox, Sametime, Notes, …

Too bad. At the terminal I saw that that my most popular subdirectories in my homedir were empty! Where were all the files? I tried to reboot the machine and to run xfs_repair, but there was no rescue anymore.

That made me remember that some time ago, binaries form /usr/bin and libraries from /usr/lib were mysteriously vanishing on another machine while they were running. The root partition of this machine was also xfs.

Fortunately I have always a recent backup near to me (sure, backup is not stored on another xfs), so this experience was not that painful. However, I wonder if xfs is enough reliable to not forget my files. In doubts, I will reinstall my favorite Linux distro with ext3 as soon as possible.