Reiserfs constantly overwrites files

TinheadNed

The topic summarises my problem - every time my laptop hangs and needs restarting without unmounting, on restarting some particular vital files will be overwritten with other ones. On my old laptop this was ALWAYS /etc/modules.conf which would be replaced with some random C code. Now, on this computer, it is always my Kopete configuration and/or KDE setup. And possibly other files as well. It's driving me around the bend. This has been happening for a year over two laptops, and at the moment my laptop is crashing a lot when shutting down but I don't have time to solve it. Losing files is too annoying though.

Help! I don't have the time to swap to ext3, my final 4th year project is due for first demonstration this Friday.

zeek · Posted: Sun Mar 14, 2004 10:31 pm Post subject:

Prepare for a barage of "I told you so" from the 'Already burned by Reiserfs club' and "It's been working stable for me without any problems since 1977" from the 'HansR fanboy ***hugger club.

Moving on to the problem, what is causing you so many unclean shutdowns? Are you having kernel opps, or is the battery running out of juice and turning off?

One idea is to run the command 'sync' before doing anything likely to crash the computer. THis will flush the write cache.

Jake · Veteran Joined: 31 Jul 2003 Posts: 1132

I've had this happen a few times, but never often enough to really cause problems. My suggestion, and a good idea even if you didn't have this problem, is to keep backups.

TinheadNed · Posted: Sun Mar 14, 2004 11:05 pm Post subject:

Answer 1: I don't know what's breaking, but before X closes it hangs. I've set up X to DontZap and DontVTSwitch or whatever it is as one of my colleagues likes to lteach people lessons in security by installing ssh keys, restarting X servers etc. The upshot of which is Magic SysRq doesn't work, so no remounting readonly.

Answer 2: By an amazingly thankful coincidence I realised my work was amazingly valuable to me and started backing it up nightly the day before it got completely overwritten. But backing up ~/.kde/ would be intensely annoying.

I don't want to just start a ext3 vs. reiser argument. I use reiser on some partitions on my server with no problems. It's just that even the people who DON'T like reiserfs have never claimed to me a routine loss of files.

BTW dmesg logs show transactions being replayed etc. but whether the journal gets corrupted and replays crazy shit is anybody's guess.

CaribbeanKnight · Posted: Sun Mar 14, 2004 11:08 pm Post subject:

just wanna say that i've had similar problems and i'm 90% sure it was due to reiserfs... see https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=143121&highlight= .. using jfs now and happy again..

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Xe.Qon · Posted: Sun Mar 14, 2004 11:21 pm Post subject:

I used to have similar problems, but I believe I've gotten them to go away. I had the same symptoms -- X would hang completely, and when I rebooted a couple files would be overwritten with random c code (in my case, they were generally files in ~/.kde/). X seemed to be crashing because of the nvidia drivers I use (it used to crash a lot during opengl screensavers as well).

The thing I did that (I believe) fixed it was to add "nolapic" to the end of my kernel line in Grub. The post I found it in suggested adding "noapic nolapic", but I already don't have apic compiled into my kernel. I'm not sure what apic and lapic do, so I would do a little research before appending them. It doesn't seem to have any averse effects on my computer (a laptop). My computer hasn't hardlocked once since I added them (and hence, no fs corruption).

In the thread CaribbeanKnight mentioned, somebody suggested that the option "notail" in /etc/fstab could cause corruption as well. I've gotten rid of that flag and not had any problems, although I doubt it was what fixed my issues. (It also causes problems with, e.g., lilo).

Good luck!

TinheadNed · Posted: Sun Mar 14, 2004 11:24 pm Post subject:

Thanks for the link. I appear to be getting exactly the same problems as you. I'm also confused by the no-fsck-on-reboot thing. While the explanation makes sense, I remember about a year ago my laptop actually doing quick fsck type jobs on my reiser partition. I assume it was an init script thing. Admittedly they didn't appear to fix the problem.

I was looking forward to reiser4 but now I reckon I'll admire from a distance.

It's just a shame I can't tune the partition in a way to make it more secure. I'm not using noatime or notail. At this rate I'll have to start using sync in the options.

Xe.Qon · Posted: Mon Mar 15, 2004 1:31 am Post subject:

Did you try appending "noapic nolapic"? That was what seemed to fix my problem, not removing "notail".

zeek · Posted: Mon Mar 15, 2004 6:27 am Post subject:

TinheadNed · Posted: Mon Mar 15, 2004 10:03 am Post subject:

I can't find noapic or nolapic in the man page for mount as an option so I'll research that this evening.

I ran fsck once, and as it was still going after half an hour I turned it off to go to bed. I'm sure I'm doing something wrong with reiserfs. It's supposed to be better and faster, but my harddrive has always felt sluggish, files get lost, and fscks take YEARS!

georwell · Posted: Mon Mar 15, 2004 10:26 am Post subject:

Xe.Qon · Posted: Mon Mar 15, 2004 3:45 pm Post subject:

TinheadNed · Posted: Mon Mar 15, 2004 7:50 pm Post subject:

ehehe, I'm glad I sound professional enough to work for a company. I'm a student, feeling massive crunch time right about now. I'm doing my very cool project (if I say so myself) to make a mobile robot that uses 802.11b to communicate with a base station (or whatever). Writing client and server side code is a little tricky when it vanishes.

I'm not sure what disabling the APIC would do to fix this, but I don't have much else to try.

Sod paying the $25. I think ext3 next week, just to compare.

irf2003 · Veteran Joined: 10 Sep 2003 Posts: 1078

Reiserfs is great for partitions containing static files, e.g
your mp3 collection, provided that you mount it RO.
it is also great for temp files, e.g. your portage "$PORTAGE_TMPDIR"
but anything else can be very dangerous, unless you
have hardware which you are 100% sure that it will
no lock up, and you have a UPS so that in case of a
power outage you will be covered.
ext3 may be a hog, but at least it's reliable.
while Reiserfs is substantially better performing, if missused
it will bite you
hth

Malakin · Posted: Mon Mar 15, 2004 8:52 pm Post subject:

Consistant problems with Reiser or any of the journalling filesystems obviously aren't normal. Try nolapic as was suggested and if it works let us know.

fsck's aren't faster, it's just that journalling filesystems don't do a full fsck on boot after mounting a drive that wasn't unmounted before, they just do journal replays as that's all that should be needed.

psyqil · Advocate Joined: 26 May 2003 Posts: 2767

Malakin · Posted: Mon Mar 15, 2004 10:05 pm Post subject:

TinheadNed · Posted: Mon Mar 15, 2004 11:21 pm Post subject:

It does describe the problem exactly though. I'll add the nolapic boot parameter, although I don't know what it does. I'll just have faith in y'all.

Xe.Qon · Posted: Wed Mar 17, 2004 11:34 pm Post subject:

So is your not posting for two days an indication that your problem was fixed, or that your computer has been irrevocably destroyed? Or am I just too impatient?

irf2003 · Veteran Joined: 10 Sep 2003 Posts: 1078

Malakin · Posted: Thu Mar 18, 2004 5:18 am Post subject:

nmcsween · Guru Joined: 12 Nov 2003 Posts: 381

Malakin · Posted: Thu Mar 18, 2004 7:44 am Post subject:

nmcsween · Guru Joined: 12 Nov 2003 Posts: 381

Im not arguing that it doesn't journal. But to my understanding reiserfs is somehow not the same as ext3 whe it comes to journaling.

TinheadNed · Posted: Thu Mar 18, 2004 10:09 am Post subject:

My laptop is crashing slightly less atm, but that's just asking for trouble. I was going to use the noapic and nolapic until I realised that by laptop doesn't HAVE APIC support in it.

Ext3 next week I think.