Re: Reiser FS will not boot after crash

[Jeff Mahoney <jeffm@suse.com>]

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Vladimir V. Saveliev wrote:
> Hello
> 
> On Monday 04 September 2006 23:26, jmh5@nei.mv.com wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>>   I am observing the following Reiser failure:
>>
>>   I am trying to use camorama with a Creative WebCam Live spca5xx driver
>> (recently downloaded and compiled) . Camorama does not start and computer
>> freezes (no response to mouse, or keyboard. Can't change to terminal
>> window.
>>
>>   Reset or pull plug leaves Knoppix 5.0.1-DVD unbootable:
>>
>>   The actual message from GRUB is inconsistent filesystem?! From a boot
>> loader?
> 
> after unclean shutdown journal reply is necessary to return reiserfs to 
> consistent state. Maybe GRUB did not do that?

Grub uses the journal in a read-only mode. It doesn't replay it in a
writable fashion. When grub needs a block, it scans the blocks used in
the journal, and uses the most recent copy it finds there before looking
out to the rest of the file system.

>>   The 'fix' is even stranger. I execute fsck.reiserfs from another OS
>> partition on the Knoppix 5.0.1-DVD partition (takes forever). 
> 
> Did fsck complete? What did it report?
> 
>> Somehow 
>> 'reading' the Knoppix filesystem 'fixes' whatever was preventing Knoppix
>> 5.0.1-DVD from booting.
>>
> 
> fsck replayed the journal.
> Does camorama work now?
> 
> If it still causes computer freeze - can you please install serial or network 
> console and try to catch what does kernel output when it freezes.

If the system doesn't work still, I believe grub has a debugging output
mode that could yield more information. You'd need to rebuild and
reinstall it.

- -Jeff

- --
Jeff Mahoney
SUSE Labs
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