Reiser4 Woes

StarCat76 · n00b Joined: 03 Nov 2003 Posts: 15

Alright, this may take a bit to fully describe my situation.

I was using reiserfs for my root partition. People were saying that Reiser4 was good, so I decided to switch to it. This is how I did so:
Booted into knoppix.
Used resize_reiserfs to resize my partition to less than half of the entire size of the disc.
Used fdisk to recreate the partion, ending a little after where the filesystem did. Create a new partiton from the end of that partition to the end of the disc.
Booted back to gentoo.
Used mkfs.reiser4 to create a reiser4 filesystem on the 2nd partition.
Copied everything over to there (cp -a -x / /mnt/reiser4).
Booted into that partition.
Created Reiser4 filesystem on first partiton, copied everything back.
In knoppix set the 1st partition till the end of disk. Tried to use resizefs.reiser4 to resize it, got
"ERR: Not Implemented". Damn, alright, I'll live with half the room till they implement that.
Boot into 1st one, live.

That's esssentially how I got it going, though I'm not sure whether that's relevant. Alright, here's the prob. Whenever I try to merge certain packages, the computer freezes, hard. At the same spot every time. Ex: PHP.
When it happens, the merge stops. Any 'sync' command stalls and is unkillable. Withing a minute or so, the computer will be dead, as in no Alt-SysRq-B dead. If I reboot into knoppix and fsck the drive, it usually finds errors, which I always fix. Boot back into gentoo, same thing.

What I've tried: A lot.
Upgraded from 2.6.7-rc3-love2 to 2.6.7-r7-love7. Same thing. If I renice the threads up to -19 as is stated in the ebuild, the php ebuild is killed straight off. Other ebuilds kill the system, though.
Booted into redeeman's love live-cd. Fsck it, mount it, chroot into it, emerge php, regardless of niceness of threads, system's dead as a doornail.

I'm out of ideas. What all can you suggest, besides yelling "Damn!" and trying to go back to ReiserFS?
-Neil

_danno · n00b Joined: 08 Nov 2003 Posts: 17 Location: Michigan, USA

are you using the latest libaal and reiser4progs? I had the same problem about three weeks ago, which all went away after i installed libaal-5.2 and reiser4progs-0.5.5 while chrooted from the live cd into my reiser4 partition. It was a while ago, so your probably using the newer versions but just an idea

petrjanda · Posted: Sat Jul 10, 2004 4:28 am Post subject:

I installed Gentoo on a reiser4 /, so far i don't notice any weirdness, other than that which can be ascribed to the kernel source i am using, redeeman10, i don't like that it uses mm-sources, it has a lot of unstable code. For example my mouse sometiems becomes jerky.
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There is, a not-born, a not-become, a not-made, a not-compounded. If that unborn, not-become, not-made, not-compounded were not, there would be no escape from this here that is born, become, made and compounded. - Gautama Siddharta

StarCat76 · n00b Joined: 03 Nov 2003 Posts: 15

I checked, and I am indeed using reiser4progs .5.5 and libaal .5.2. So I guess that's probably not the problem. Thanks for replying though.

teutzz · Guru Joined: 22 Apr 2004 Posts: 333 Location: .ro

run this:

boroshan · l33t Joined: 16 Apr 2003 Posts: 730 Location: upside down

I've been having similar problems. I didn't find nopseudo helped either

Luckily, my data is in /home which is still R3, and I still have my old R3 root partition as well. I can see me migrating back until things stabilise a bit. I don't mind a bit of instability, but persistent repeatable hangs on compilation are pretty much a show stopper.
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Don't let THEM immanentize the Eschaton!

teutzz · Guru Joined: 22 Apr 2004 Posts: 333 Location: .ro

well, i have root and boot partition with reiser4 (using lilo) and i really have no problems... i really mean... none!!!

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Cand nu stii ce sa raspunzi sau ce sa spui un simplu BLA ajunge... lolz

boroshan · l33t Joined: 16 Apr 2003 Posts: 730 Location: upside down

what kernel are you running? I have my doubts about some of the recent mm/love releases...
_________________
Don't let THEM immanentize the Eschaton!

petrjanda · Posted: Sat Jul 10, 2004 10:52 am Post subject:

I think i finally found a working kernel for me...2.6.7-love8-ck5
_________________
There is, a not-born, a not-become, a not-made, a not-compounded. If that unborn, not-become, not-made, not-compounded were not, there would be no escape from this here that is born, become, made and compounded. - Gautama Siddharta

teutzz · Guru Joined: 22 Apr 2004 Posts: 333 Location: .ro

currently 2.6.7-love7 (in my opinnion the best love since 2.6.6-love, but didn´t had the time to try out 2.6.7-love8); but YMMV
_________________
Cand nu stii ce sa raspunzi sau ce sa spui un simplu BLA ajunge... lolz

spb · Posted: Sat Jul 10, 2004 11:21 am Post subject:

petrjanda · Posted: Sat Jul 10, 2004 11:42 am Post subject:

boroshan · l33t Joined: 16 Apr 2003 Posts: 730 Location: upside down

it basically greps your mounts for reiser4 partitions and then renices the userspace programs that manage those partitions. Take a look at the awk man page - its an incredibly useful scripting tool
_________________
Don't let THEM immanentize the Eschaton!

spb · Posted: Sat Jul 10, 2004 12:58 pm Post subject:

StarCat76 · n00b Joined: 03 Nov 2003 Posts: 15

I do have the pgrep renicer as part of my startup scripts, but that didn't seem to help ; things just died in different ways. I'm trying out the rootflags=nopseudo thing right now and will update you.

Two more things:
Where is 2.6.7-love8? I haven't seen anything past love7.

And, when I use resizefs.reiser4 on the partition, version .5.5, if I, say, do
resizefs.reiser4 /dev/hda3 105G
it just gi and ves me the usage as if I gave it too many args. If I don't give it the size, it complains about that too. I've tried pretty much any way I can think of, without it working. Ideas?

StarCat76 · n00b Joined: 03 Nov 2003 Posts: 15

I tried with 2.6.7-love7 and rootflags=nopseudo. Now, when I try to emerge php, it confgures, starts to compile, then is mysterously killed. After the first compile command, it just says that make in php-java.jar I think it is Killed, and quits. No error message, nothing. Perhaps the kernel's killing it for some reason? This now happens regardless of whether the reiser4 threads are niced to -19.[/code]

Isaiah · Guru Joined: 25 Feb 2003 Posts: 359

teutzz · Guru Joined: 22 Apr 2004 Posts: 333 Location: .ro

i really don´t think this a reiser4 connected problem, but i must admit i have no clue why this happens (ie been using reiser 4 on my root partition for 3 months now and i even did an emerge -e world during this time)

p.s. do you have use larger_keys enabled under reiser4 filesystem options in kernel config (it must be enabled) and larger_keys reiser4 is bynary incompatible with small_keys reiser4
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Cand nu stii ce sa raspunzi sau ce sa spui un simplu BLA ajunge... lolz

StarCat76 · n00b Joined: 03 Nov 2003 Posts: 15

It seems weird, some people have no probs with Reiser4, for me, nothing but problems. Yes, I am using larger keys in both the kernel config and the filesystem. Here is the output of debugfs.reiser4 /dev/hda3:
debugfs.reiser4 0.5.5
Copyright (C) 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004 by Hans Reiser, licensing governed by reiser4progs/COPYING.

Master super block (16):
magic: ReIsEr4
blksize: 4096
format: 0x0 (format40)
uuid: a51d4ff3-205e-499b-9353-d53978fa92ce
label: <none>

Format super block (17):
plugin: format40
description: Disk-format for reiser4, ver. 0.5.5
magic: ReIsEr40FoRmAt
flushes: 0
mkfs id: 0x5c7101ec
blocks: 29145926
free blocks: 21355155
root block: 6668972
tail policy: 0x2 (smart)
next oid: 0x1b803d
file count: 277905
tree height: 4
key policy: LARGE

FS status block (21):
FS marked consistent

I will try love8.

StarCat76 · n00b Joined: 03 Nov 2003 Posts: 15

I am using love8, and it is still occurring. Dang.

MrApples · Guru Joined: 13 Dec 2002 Posts: 511

i just had this same problem, i tried love8, love8-ck5, and xx, none of which worked

im moving back to reiserfs right now

boroshan · l33t Joined: 16 Apr 2003 Posts: 730 Location: upside down

I'm on R4/love8 with all process reniced and passing nopseudo and all of a sudden, everything works again.

The trouble seems to have been a borked config somwehere in the last few kernel upgrades. Since then it all seems to run fine...

Wish I knew what I did to snafu it in the first place...

_________________
Don't let THEM immanentize the Eschaton!

coutts99 · Posted: Tue Jul 13, 2004 11:36 am Post subject:

I tired Reiser 4 and it just segfaulted both machines I had it running on.

_Adik_ · Posted: Tue Jul 13, 2004 2:03 pm Post subject:

MrApples · Guru Joined: 13 Dec 2002 Posts: 511

i tried all the renicing and nopseudo suggestions and they didnt make a difference for me