Re: --rebuild-tree, out of disk

["David D. Huff Jr." <David.Huff@computer-critters.com>]

Vitaly Fertman wrote:
>>The system was using an abnormal amount of space, going through 3.8 Gig
>>of space in a week that could not be accounted for. I checked directory
>>sizes and file sizes, nothing added up to the space being used. It was
>>only a webserver and disk growth shouldn't have been more that 35MB a
>>month. I ran reiserfsck --check and it said it was OK but I knew it
>>wasn't so when I ran --rebuild-tree, it ran out of space.
> 
> 
> what reiserfsprogs version do you use? 
3.6.11
> did you specify any option to reiserfsck?
Yes, --rebuild-tree
> 
> 
>>I'd allocated 2 Gig for swap, so I used cfdisk to reduce it to 1600 Mb
>>(/dev/hda2) and deleted and re-allocated the reiserfs partition
>>(/dev/hda1) to include the full size. When I run resize_reiserfs -f it
>>says to run reiserfsck --rebuild-tree. Well I've done that and received
>>the same out of disk condition. -That and using every other switch I can
>>think of. I also used gpart but it only recognized /dev/hda2 and that
>>there was a 27 Gig partition in front of it, then gpart would abort.
> 
> 
> so you increased the 25G fs up to 27 Gb and got out of space again, 
> correct?
No, it was already 27 Gig, it should have been 400 Mb larger but since
resize_reiserfs won't run it still reports the original size. cfdisk
reports the additional size correctly.
> 
> 
>>At this point I'm thinking it is de-allocating bad sectors as fast as
>>the drive can write.
> 
> 
> What do you mean by saying 'bad sectors'? Are there bad blocks on 
> your drive or what? You should fix hardware problems first and read 
> also http://www.namesys.com/bad-block-handling.html please.
> 
Thanks, I only had time to try once today and it didn't report any bad
blocks. Work continues as time allows.
> 
>>For my next step I intend to dd the partition to another disk with a
>>larger formatted partition and try to run --rebuild tree there.
> 
> 
> I would advise to zero the rest of the 'larger partition' beyond the 
> source partition size to avoid any possible problem of mixing your 
> valid data with old reiserfs data existed on the 'larger partition'.
> 
Good idea, I was concerned about old data showing up. I'll have to read
up on how to zero the data, I've done that for the MBR in the past but
not for data.
> 
>>For your edutainment, that bad disk is one of those IBM Deskstars
>>mentioned on the namesys faq I did not know that there was class action
>>suit pending in the matter, this is the 4th (Deskstar) drive to die less
>>than three years old and on short notice,(all purchased from Jan 2000
>>through June 2001, before their evils were known).
> 
>