File "corruption" with reiserfs

heathkit · n00b Joined: 23 Apr 2002 Posts: 38

I've had some problems with reisefs, but I'd like to give it another chance. I was hoping someone may be able to give me a clue about what's been happening.

I caught the nvidia/amd lockup bug a while back. Everytime after a system freeze, I noticed the last few files I saved were overwritten with different files.

For example, I was editing the XF86Config file and saved it. Several minutes later, I go to open a web page, and the machine locks up. Upon rebooting, I see that my config file has been replaced with a copy of the webpage I looked when the machine crashed.

I see this every time I get a hard lockup. Of course, I've resolved those problems now and don't have to reboot every five minutes, but it creeps me out that that'll probably happen if a do lockup again. Any advice?

I am mounting with noatune and notail, mostly because someone told me to. Could this be a problem?

sven · Apprentice Joined: 19 Apr 2002 Posts: 274

Just curious, how did you fix the nvidia/amd problem? I think I also had this problem but I was not using reiserfs. I used XFS and also had file corruptions...

dojobi · n00b Joined: 07 Jan 2004 Posts: 9

Hi,
I've just experienced the same problem. I'm also running ReiserFS and an nForce 2 board, but it didn't lock up - we had a storm and the machine reset. Anyone know what the deal is with this? It's really scary that this sort of thing can happen.

Is there a way to convert a ReiserFS partition to ext3? Also, since this can happen so easily, why do people say that ReiserFS is production ready?!

Michael

BlinkEye · Posted: Sat Jan 24, 2004 2:53 pm Post subject:

good point. could someone with more experience give his opinion/advice?

Loke · Apprentice Joined: 25 May 2002 Posts: 274 Location: Norway

I got serious problems with reiserFS 3.6 too. If my machine hardlocks, I always get strange code-entries into /var/log/wtmp for example part of mp3 files, part of letters, system files etc. If using chkrootkit and chkwtmp, I get deletion alarms due to this reiserFS fsck up. Im missing ext3 already. A little slower, but hardly worth the fact that alot of system files gets corrupted.
_________________
I'm not saying there should be capital punishment for stupidity, I'm saying why don't we take the warning labels off of everything, and let the problem take care of itself?

BlinkEye · Posted: Sat Jan 24, 2004 5:14 pm Post subject:

well, i don't like your news at all. thought reiserfs was pretty worth it. i had one issue 2 weeks ago where i couldn't boot any more because the system told me, that i had a bad filesystem and hence must rebuild the table tree. well, easier said than made - how to unmount your root partition? well, i used a gentoo boot cdrom and made a "reisersfck --rebuild-tree". the system told me that i should backup my data because i could probably loose it. well, i didn't back up and i didn't loose any data. i don't know why this happened. my system never locked up and it was after a clean reboot that this error occured. i didn't think much about it but as you're telling me know that there are (other) serious problem with reiserfs...

Loke · Apprentice Joined: 25 May 2002 Posts: 274 Location: Norway

To put it like this: Using Linux extensively since 1999

- I have NEVER EVER had file corruption with ext2/3 during hard crash of some kind (onboard soundcard, nvidia - you know the drill)

- moderately estimate: 7 of 10 times a hardcrash with reiserFS will produce some kind of corruption. Almost every time a false entry in wtmp. Also /etc/modules.conf is a file which is often corrupted.

I also thought reiserFS was THE fs to choose, but tbh Im wondering abit about the journaling replay during boot after crash. ReiserFS says journaling replay is skipped because of read-only filesystem. That seems very strange. Whats the point with a journaling fs if you cant replay the journal after a crash?
_________________
I'm not saying there should be capital punishment for stupidity, I'm saying why don't we take the warning labels off of everything, and let the problem take care of itself?

azlan · Posted: Sat Jan 24, 2004 11:45 pm Post subject:

I personally spoke with hans (for two brief lines on irc)

he said that reiserfs to his knowledge is not supported under amd64

I tried it, and got the same probs.

ext3 is the only fs that I have used under amd64 with any success.
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azlan · Posted: Sat Jan 24, 2004 11:49 pm Post subject:

ps.

I am running Reiser4 totally on my dual 32b athlon system and aside from weird output and lockup on halt or reboot I havent lost a thing.

pretty cool really I have been playing with the plugin id stuff. fun

_________________
there is no crazy, only violet and non violet..

slikdigit · n00b Joined: 30 Aug 2002 Posts: 73 Location: US

sounds like reiser4 will be the way to go with AMD 64 then (BTW I've had many a crash/lockup/power failure during the years I've run reiser on 32 bit- never had file corruption) ReiserFS only does meta-data journalling, so I suppose if you go down during a write you could loose data on that file, but the filesystem remains intact.
I have had problems galore with ext2, so I don't reccomend it. ext3 is the safest choice (Reiser4 is the coolest, though its not ready yet)
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azlan · Posted: Sun Jan 25, 2004 2:46 am Post subject:

actually thats not true ReiserFS does both data and metadata journalling depending on what options you use.

Reiser4 has even more ways to order data and some smart implimentation of journalling. Plus the filesystem is atomic, which is theoretically safer to begin with.

(although it is still in debug as of now)
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there is no crazy, only violet and non violet..

slikdigit · n00b Joined: 30 Aug 2002 Posts: 73 Location: US

I've heard there's a patch for ReiserFS that does data journalling, and i've read in multiple sources that reiserFS stock does not. When you say it does, do you mean the patched version of ReiserFS or that a newer version includes this functionality? Also, how do you turn it on? Its an interesting option.
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reaver · Posted: Sun Jan 25, 2004 6:18 pm Post subject:

Last week I had to rebuild-tree a reiserfspartition on my hardrive. I've been having some strange issues with cdrecord locking my computer down with either hdc=scsi or hdc=ide-cd in my grub.conf.
I use 2.6.1-mm4 and I didn't fsck my reiserfs /home partition since I installed Gentoo. My home directory had some strange zero byte files which neither root or I could delete. After the rebuild-tree fsck stuff these files were gone and the system reported the free space correctly again. It's sad however that I can't get my cdrecord to burn any iso images (anymore).

Raniz · Posted: Sun Jan 25, 2004 6:41 pm Post subject:

reaver · Posted: Sun Jan 25, 2004 8:28 pm Post subject:

The funny thing is: The only way I got my burner to work initially in 2.6 was with ide-scsi and not with ide-cd. Somehow I messed something up later, or the freebsd isos I got are unburnable

BlinkEye · Posted: Sun Jan 25, 2004 8:35 pm Post subject:

thanks for your answers and your opinions. it would be nice to hear more about reiser4 . and what the heck is now really the advantage of reiserfs?

OneOfOne · Guru Joined: 28 May 2003 Posts: 368

slikdigit · n00b Joined: 30 Aug 2002 Posts: 73 Location: US

Reiser4 is extremely cool; not only is it fast but it has very advanced design- way ahead of the 'mainstream' OS's. Its atomicity is higher, security is better, supports plugins to the filesystem for 'advanced features', writes directories and files as identical nodes with diferent metadata; every file is ALSO a directory that contains arbitrary or program defined metadata. The whole filesystem is written inspired by database but optimised for speed. There's some excellentwriteups on both reiserFS and reiser4 on namesys that you should read to get the whole picture.
Incidentally ReiserFS is still pretty cool:
balanced tree architecture
good performance (not as good as Reiser4)
metadata journalling
efficient and fast at small file retreival; small files do not waste space like ext for instance, and they can be accessed fast. Thes might be cool for instance for maildir type mailboxes- lots of small files. XFS on the otherhaand is more optimized for large files/smp systems. ext3 is the safest -not neccessaril;y from the technical perspective, but from being the default and the most 'experienced'.
Personally, I think Reiser4 is the only filesystem out there that will make things like storage practical from a perfomance perspective; I hope the developers of storage, dashboard, etc.enable its features.
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I like tapes.