r4 observations

r4 observations

[Peter]

I booted from a non-reiser4 partition in order to make a backup of my main 
/ which was a r4 partition.

After the backup, I unmounted the drive explicitly, then rebooted.

I did not use the backed up drive for anything except tar-ring its files.

On next boot to the r4 / partition, all kinds of file not found errors
occurred. I booted again to my non-r4 partition, and ran fsck.reiser4
--check -y there were fatal errors on my r4 /.

The backup was fine. I downgraded back to reiserfs which does not exhibit
this problem.

I have not experienced any problem with other r4 partitions. Just /.
/home, /tmp, /src, etc. are fine.

Unfortunately, I don't have time to keep wondering where the problem is or
why. Perhaps it's the kernel or the init scripts. Nonetheless, the
instability of whatever the problem is is unnerving.

-- 
Peter
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Re: r4 observations

[Vladimir V. Saveliev]

Hello

On Wednesday 20 September 2006 22:47, Peter wrote:
> I booted from a non-reiser4 partition in order to make a backup of my main 
> / which was a r4 partition.
> 
> After the backup, I unmounted the drive explicitly, then rebooted.
> 
> I did not use the backed up drive for anything except tar-ring its files.
> 
> On next boot to the r4 / partition, all kinds of file not found errors
> occurred. I booted again to my non-r4 partition, and ran fsck.reiser4
> --check -y there were fatal errors on my r4 /.
> 
> The backup was fine. I downgraded back to reiserfs which does not exhibit
> this problem.
> 
> I have not experienced any problem with other r4 partitions. Just /.
> /home, /tmp, /src, etc. are fine.
> 
> Unfortunately, I don't have time to keep wondering where the problem is or
> why. Perhaps it's the kernel or the init scripts. Nonetheless, the
> instability of whatever the problem is is unnerving.
> 

Please provide information about which kernel and which reiser4 did you use.
Am I correct that you were trying to run gentoo on reiser4?

Re: r4 observations

[Peter]

On Thu, 21 Sep 2006 15:02:01 +0400, Vladimir V. Saveliev wrote:

> Hello
> 
> On Wednesday 20 September 2006 22:47, Peter wrote:
>> I booted from a non-reiser4 partition in order to make a backup of my main 
>> / which was a r4 partition.
>> 
>> After the backup, I unmounted the drive explicitly, then rebooted.
>> 
>> I did not use the backed up drive for anything except tar-ring its files.
>> 
>> On next boot to the r4 / partition, all kinds of file not found errors
>> occurred. I booted again to my non-r4 partition, and ran fsck.reiser4
>> --check -y there were fatal errors on my r4 /.
>> 
>> The backup was fine. I downgraded back to reiserfs which does not exhibit
>> this problem.
>> 
>> I have not experienced any problem with other r4 partitions. Just /.
>> /home, /tmp, /src, etc. are fine.
>> 
>> Unfortunately, I don't have time to keep wondering where the problem is or
>> why. Perhaps it's the kernel or the init scripts. Nonetheless, the
>> instability of whatever the problem is is unnerving.
>> 
> 
> Please provide information about which kernel and which reiser4 did you use.
> Am I correct that you were trying to run gentoo on reiser4?

Yes, Vladimir. When making the backup, I was not running Gentoo at all. I
was running Slackware 10.2. I booted into Slackware with the beyond
patchset (ck superset) based on 2.6.17.11 with the reiser4 2.6.17-3 patch.
All of the work on backup mount and unmount was on Slackware. It was when
rebooting back into Gentoo (with the init and base layout which DID NOT
CAUSE a boot problem) that the fatal errors occurred. Interestingly, and
maybe this is helpful, only the / partition seems to be affected. I have
observed no problematic behavior with any of the other three partitions I
used r4 for. In fact, even though I downgraded / to reiserfs3, the other
r4 partitions work fine. Please let me know if I can provide additional
information.

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Peter
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Re: r4 observations

[Thomas Kuther]

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On Thu, 21 Sep 2006 11:18:41 +0000 (UTC)
"Peter" <sw98234@hotmail.com> wrote:

> On Thu, 21 Sep 2006 15:02:01 +0400, Vladimir V. Saveliev wrote:
> 
> > Hello
> > 
> > On Wednesday 20 September 2006 22:47, Peter wrote:
> >> I booted from a non-reiser4 partition in order to make a backup of
> >> my main / which was a r4 partition.
> >> 
> >> After the backup, I unmounted the drive explicitly, then rebooted.
> >> 
> >> I did not use the backed up drive for anything except tar-ring its
> >> files.
> >> 
> >> On next boot to the r4 / partition, all kinds of file not found
> >> errors occurred. I booted again to my non-r4 partition, and ran
> >> fsck.reiser4 --check -y there were fatal errors on my r4 /.
> >> 
> >> The backup was fine. I downgraded back to reiserfs which does not
> >> exhibit this problem.
> >> 
> >> I have not experienced any problem with other r4 partitions.
> >> Just /. /home, /tmp, /src, etc. are fine.
> >> 
> >> Unfortunately, I don't have time to keep wondering where the
> >> problem is or why. Perhaps it's the kernel or the init scripts.
> >> Nonetheless, the instability of whatever the problem is is
> >> unnerving.
> >> 
> > 
> > Please provide information about which kernel and which reiser4 did
> > you use. Am I correct that you were trying to run gentoo on reiser4?
> 
> Yes, Vladimir. When making the backup, I was not running Gentoo at
> all. I was running Slackware 10.2. I booted into Slackware with the
> beyond patchset (ck superset) based on 2.6.17.11 with the reiser4
> 2.6.17-3 patch. All of the work on backup mount and unmount was on
> Slackware. It was when rebooting back into Gentoo (with the init and
> base layout which DID NOT CAUSE a boot problem) that the fatal errors
> occurred. Interestingly, and maybe this is helpful, only the /
> partition seems to be affected. I have observed no problematic
> behavior with any of the other three partitions I used r4 for. In
> fact, even though I downgraded / to reiserfs3, the other r4
> partitions work fine. Please let me know if I can provide additional
> information.
> 

2.6.17-beyond includes -ck1 which includes fcache which is totally evil
for reiser4. The old fscache patch in .17-ck1 tends to kill reiser4 /usr
here (I assume your /usr is in / then) when rebooting/umounting the
partition. Also newer -mm is evil and umount on /usr completely fails
here, i have to hard reset the box, but here the partitions stay
alive, with the older fcache i had to --build-sb and --fix it, and
then remerge all stuff that was lost.
Oh and this happens even i didn't enable fcache in kernel config, just
the existance of the patch is enough.
Strangely it's reproducably and only /usr. So if you run the /usr
folder on a reiser4 partition, do NOT use -mm, or at least good luck
trying to break out fcache. Reversing the fcache patch from -beyond is
easy, just get the broken-out from -ck and patch -R it.

HTH
Tom


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Re: r4 observations

[Peter]

On Fri, 22 Sep 2006 14:02:44 +0200, Thomas Kuther wrote:

> On Thu, 21 Sep 2006 11:18:41 +0000 (UTC)
> "Peter" <sw98234-PkbjNfxxIARBDgjK7y7TUQ@public.gmane.org> wrote:
> 
>> On Thu, 21 Sep 2006 15:02:01 +0400, Vladimir V. Saveliev wrote:
>> 
>> > Hello
>> > 
>> > On Wednesday 20 September 2006 22:47, Peter wrote:
>> >> I booted from a non-reiser4 partition in order to make a backup of
>> >> my main / which was a r4 partition.
>> >> 
>> >> After the backup, I unmounted the drive explicitly, then rebooted.
>> >> 
>> >> I did not use the backed up drive for anything except tar-ring its
>> >> files.
>> >> 
>> >> On next boot to the r4 / partition, all kinds of file not found
>> >> errors occurred. I booted again to my non-r4 partition, and ran
>> >> fsck.reiser4 --check -y there were fatal errors on my r4 /.
>> >> 
>> >> The backup was fine. I downgraded back to reiserfs which does not
>> >> exhibit this problem.
>> >> 
>> >> I have not experienced any problem with other r4 partitions.
>> >> Just /. /home, /tmp, /src, etc. are fine.
>> >> 
>> >> Unfortunately, I don't have time to keep wondering where the
>> >> problem is or why. Perhaps it's the kernel or the init scripts.
>> >> Nonetheless, the instability of whatever the problem is is
>> >> unnerving.
>> >> 
>> > 
>> > Please provide information about which kernel and which reiser4 did
>> > you use. Am I correct that you were trying to run gentoo on reiser4?
>> 
>> Yes, Vladimir. When making the backup, I was not running Gentoo at
>> all. I was running Slackware 10.2. I booted into Slackware with the
>> beyond patchset (ck superset) based on 2.6.17.11 with the reiser4
>> 2.6.17-3 patch. All of the work on backup mount and unmount was on
>> Slackware. It was when rebooting back into Gentoo (with the init and
>> base layout which DID NOT CAUSE a boot problem) that the fatal errors
>> occurred. Interestingly, and maybe this is helpful, only the /
>> partition seems to be affected. I have observed no problematic
>> behavior with any of the other three partitions I used r4 for. In
>> fact, even though I downgraded / to reiserfs3, the other r4
>> partitions work fine. Please let me know if I can provide additional
>> information.
>> 
> 
> 2.6.17-beyond includes -ck1 which includes fcache which is totally evil
> for reiser4. The old fscache patch in .17-ck1 tends to kill reiser4 /usr
> here (I assume your /usr is in / then) when rebooting/umounting the
> partition. Also newer -mm is evil and umount on /usr completely fails
> here, i have to hard reset the box, but here the partitions stay
> alive, with the older fcache i had to --build-sb and --fix it, and
> then remerge all stuff that was lost.
> Oh and this happens even i didn't enable fcache in kernel config, just
> the existance of the patch is enough.
> Strangely it's reproducably and only /usr. So if you run the /usr
> folder on a reiser4 partition, do NOT use -mm, or at least good luck
> trying to break out fcache. Reversing the fcache patch from -beyond is
> easy, just get the broken-out from -ck and patch -R it.
> 
> HTH
> Tom

Thanks for the tip, Tom! You're the second person (unless you're the same
one on the gentoo forums) to mention this. I suspect, with your use of the
word evil, you're the same! :)

Nonetheless, I lost patience, and did not want to be in a changing beta
situation as kernels, patches, etc. are all changing at different rates of
speed. I found this bug both annoying and disconcerting. I have one r4
partition left, and since it's not / there appear to be no problems.

I assume the various parties involved are all aware of this?


-- 
Peter
+++++
Do not reply to this email, it is a spam trap and not monitored.
I can be reached via this list, or via 
jabber: pete4abw at jabber.org
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Re: r4 observations

[Thomas Kuther]

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On Fri, 22 Sep 2006 12:27:23 +0000 (UTC)
"Peter" <sw98234@hotmail.com> wrote:

> On Fri, 22 Sep 2006 14:02:44 +0200, Thomas Kuther wrote:
> 
> > On Thu, 21 Sep 2006 11:18:41 +0000 (UTC)
> > "Peter" <sw98234@hotmail.com> wrote:
> > 
> >> On Thu, 21 Sep 2006 15:02:01 +0400, Vladimir V. Saveliev wrote:
> >> 
> >> > Hello
> >> > 
> >> > On Wednesday 20 September 2006 22:47, Peter wrote:
> >> >> I booted from a non-reiser4 partition in order to make a backup
> >> >> of my main / which was a r4 partition.
> >> >> 
> >> >> After the backup, I unmounted the drive explicitly, then
> >> >> rebooted.
> >> >> 
> >> >> I did not use the backed up drive for anything except tar-ring
> >> >> its files.
> >> >> 
> >> >> On next boot to the r4 / partition, all kinds of file not found
> >> >> errors occurred. I booted again to my non-r4 partition, and ran
> >> >> fsck.reiser4 --check -y there were fatal errors on my r4 /.
> >> >> 
> >> >> The backup was fine. I downgraded back to reiserfs which does
> >> >> not exhibit this problem.
> >> >> 
> >> >> I have not experienced any problem with other r4 partitions.
> >> >> Just /. /home, /tmp, /src, etc. are fine.
> >> >> 
> >> >> Unfortunately, I don't have time to keep wondering where the
> >> >> problem is or why. Perhaps it's the kernel or the init scripts.
> >> >> Nonetheless, the instability of whatever the problem is is
> >> >> unnerving.
> >> >> 
> >> > 
> >> > Please provide information about which kernel and which reiser4
> >> > did you use. Am I correct that you were trying to run gentoo on
> >> > reiser4?
> >> 
> >> Yes, Vladimir. When making the backup, I was not running Gentoo at
> >> all. I was running Slackware 10.2. I booted into Slackware with the
> >> beyond patchset (ck superset) based on 2.6.17.11 with the reiser4
> >> 2.6.17-3 patch. All of the work on backup mount and unmount was on
> >> Slackware. It was when rebooting back into Gentoo (with the init
> >> and base layout which DID NOT CAUSE a boot problem) that the fatal
> >> errors occurred. Interestingly, and maybe this is helpful, only
> >> the / partition seems to be affected. I have observed no
> >> problematic behavior with any of the other three partitions I used
> >> r4 for. In fact, even though I downgraded / to reiserfs3, the
> >> other r4 partitions work fine. Please let me know if I can provide
> >> additional information.
> >> 
> > 
> > 2.6.17-beyond includes -ck1 which includes fcache which is totally
> > evil for reiser4. The old fscache patch in .17-ck1 tends to kill
> > reiser4 /usr here (I assume your /usr is in / then) when
> > rebooting/umounting the partition. Also newer -mm is evil and
> > umount on /usr completely fails here, i have to hard reset the box,
> > but here the partitions stay alive, with the older fcache i had to
> > --build-sb and --fix it, and then remerge all stuff that was lost.
> > Oh and this happens even i didn't enable fcache in kernel config,
> > just the existance of the patch is enough.
> > Strangely it's reproducably and only /usr. So if you run the /usr
> > folder on a reiser4 partition, do NOT use -mm, or at least good luck
> > trying to break out fcache. Reversing the fcache patch from -beyond
> > is easy, just get the broken-out from -ck and patch -R it.
> > 
> > HTH
> > Tom
> 
> Thanks for the tip, Tom! You're the second person (unless you're the
> same one on the gentoo forums) to mention this. I suspect, with your
> use of the word evil, you're the same! :)
> 
> Nonetheless, I lost patience, and did not want to be in a changing
> beta situation as kernels, patches, etc. are all changing at
> different rates of speed. I found this bug both annoying and
> disconcerting. I have one r4 partition left, and since it's not /
> there appear to be no problems.
> 
> I assume the various parties involved are all aware of this?
> 

Yes, that was me :)
As i seemed to be the only person hitting that bug, i didn't mention it
here on the list nor on LKML. I just warned the users in the -beyond
and -no sources threads some releases ago ... .17-beyond1 thread
IIRC... and stopped using fcache patched kernels, because i like
my /usr/portage flying on a reiser4 partition ;)

Regards
Tom

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Re: r4 observations

[Peter]

On Fri, 22 Sep 2006 14:49:30 +0200, Thomas Kuther wrote:

snip...

> 
> Yes, that was me :)
> As i seemed to be the only person hitting that bug, i didn't mention it
> here on the list nor on LKML. I just warned the users in the -beyond
> and -no sources threads some releases ago ... .17-beyond1 thread
> IIRC... and stopped using fcache patched kernels, because i like
> my /usr/portage flying on a reiser4 partition ;)
> 
> Regards
> Tom

I passed this along to the beyond maintainer fwiw. Still a very disturbing
problem. And, it appears, you're not alone. Well, not too alone anyway!

-- 
Peter
+++++
Do not reply to this email, it is a spam trap and not monitored.
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jabber: pete4abw at jabber.org
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Re: r4 observations

[Thomas Kuther]

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On Fri, 22 Sep 2006 13:08:34 +0000 (UTC)
"Peter" <sw98234@hotmail.com> wrote:

> On Fri, 22 Sep 2006 14:49:30 +0200, Thomas Kuther wrote:
> 
> snip...
> 
> > 
> > Yes, that was me :)
> > As i seemed to be the only person hitting that bug, i didn't
> > mention it here on the list nor on LKML. I just warned the users in
> > the -beyond and -no sources threads some releases
> > ago ... .17-beyond1 thread IIRC... and stopped using fcache patched
> > kernels, because i like my /usr/portage flying on a reiser4
> > partition ;)
> > 
> > Regards
> > Tom
> 
> I passed this along to the beyond maintainer fwiw. Still a very
> disturbing problem. And, it appears, you're not alone. Well, not too
> alone anyway!
> 
> -- 
> Peter

Looking at the patchlist, Con dropped fcache in 2.6.18-ck1, so if
Iphitus doesn't explicitly add it, future -beyond kernels should be
fine.
But lets clean out this issue somehow. Vladimir, you asked if Peter
runs Gentoo, so seems there is something gentoo vs. reiser4-specific
known, which somewhat explains why it always only busted my /usr
partition. So, if I got that right, reiser4 needs to be fixed for
fcache in -mm so it can deal with portage. No idea if, why and how this
is related, portage on reiser4 with a kernel w/o fcache works like a
charme, so it did the last 2 years here.

And fcache has to be fixed, because if I disable something in the
kernel config, it shouldn't be able to cause such trouble!
This fact is even more annoying than the fact that fcache, portage and
reiser4 don't play well toghether IMHO. But that's OT on this list.

Regards,
Tom



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