Installation, ReiserFS and fstab

sheepdog · Posted: Tue Dec 03, 2002 4:29 am Post subject: Installation, ReiserFS and fstab

If you make ReiserFS file systems on installation you will need to list them in your fstab as discussed in the installation doc. Unfortunately, the doc does not tell you how to specify the ReiserFS file type exactly, and after specifying them as "ReiserFS" in my installation I discovered the kernel could not boot them. This tip is to shorten your search, which was entirely too long in my case, for the correct format. It is "reiserfs".

-- Michael

lx · Posted: Tue Dec 03, 2002 9:59 am Post subject:

Should have discovered this while mounting /mnt/gentoo, cause it also gets the type from your /etc/fstab. But you've got a good point, it never occured to me, but reading it again it does suggest putting ReiserFS into /etc/fstab cause reiserfs in no where mentioned. So I think an update / change of the install documents is needed, seeing people having this problem probably won't read it here, ;-)

Cya lX.
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sheepdog · Posted: Tue Dec 03, 2002 4:17 pm Post subject: agreed

Yup, an update to install doc would be very helpful. Something else to add is that "duron" is not a valid gcc -march= option, contrary to what the make.conf comments say. Its things like this that really waste a lot of a person's time needlessly. And there are probably many other things that would be very useful to be in the install doc, especially considering how important it is to everyone. Perhaps we should explore ways to get better maintenance of it.

lx · Posted: Tue Dec 03, 2002 5:47 pm Post subject:

Well maybe you could file a bug report at bugs.gentoo.org, but I don't know if it gets read or how to call it, but the duron thingy is definitly a BUG and needs to be fixed, cause it ain't an option.

Cya lX.
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"Remember there's a big difference between kneeling down and bending over.", Frank Zappa

pilla · Posted: Thu Dec 05, 2002 9:30 pm Post subject:

talking about reiserfs, don't forget to add notail to the fstab entry where your /boot is, unless you are not using GRUB.

sheepdog · Posted: Thu Dec 05, 2002 9:52 pm Post subject:

pilla · Posted: Thu Dec 05, 2002 10:17 pm Post subject:

That's an old discussion, you may find some threads about it. But the point is that some people use it (some people don't even use a separate /boot). So, it is better to warn them

lx · Posted: Fri Dec 06, 2002 4:41 pm Post subject:

pilla · Posted: Fri Dec 06, 2002 5:13 pm Post subject:

You mean it cannot hurt, I guess

If you search, you'll find many threads just because of this detail....

zhenlin · Veteran Joined: 09 Nov 2002 Posts: 1361

boot should be give the most paranoia options. Use ext3, with both metdata and data journalling. Keep two /boot if possible, and synchronise often.

Options to use for ext3 boot: noauto data=journal noatime

May also use the above hints to protect /etc, /bin and /sbin.

lx · Posted: Sat Dec 07, 2002 3:30 pm Post subject:

rac · Posted: Sat Dec 07, 2002 8:08 pm Post subject:

pilla · Posted: Sun Dec 08, 2002 6:45 pm Post subject:

I agree with lx and rac. Maybe it would even increase the chances of something going wrong.

ghetto · Guru Joined: 10 Jul 2002 Posts: 369 Location: BC, Canada

Actually Ive dont a bit of reserch on reiserfs and i would sudgest mounting ALL you reiserfs partitions with the notail option.
The reason for this is partly according to these benchmarks.
http://www.gurulabs.com/ext3-reiserfs.html
When you check out the reiserfs website(http://www.namesys.com/) it explains what all this notail business is about, you can read it for yourself if you like, but basically reiserfs packs its tails to save space,
According to them.
"ReiserFS is more space efficient. If you write 100 byte files, we pack many of them into one block. Other filesystems put each of them into their own block. We don't have fixed space allocation for inodes. That saves 6% of your disk."

So if you turn on "notail" the tails dont get packed which results in more space being used, however also results in more responsivness under load.
I mount both my '/boot' and '/' with notail and notice no problem at all.

(side point) If your looking for responsiveness I hear its a good idea to use the hdparm '-a' flag, it specifies for read ahead. IIRC the parameters go from -a2 to -a255 .. -a2 causeing the greatest responsiveness at the cost of the most overhead, a good middle of the road is -a128... I use -a32.
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