ReiserFS? How reliable is it? Is this the future?

ReiserFS? How reliable is it? Is this the future?

[Harald Dunkel]

Hi folks,

If I get the DVD stuff working, then I won't need NT anymore, i.e.
I will have an empty disk.

What is your impression about ReiserFS? Does it work? Is it stable
enough for my daily work, or is it something to try out and watch
carefully? Do you use ReiserFS for your boot partition?

Or should I try ext3 instead?


Regards

Harri

Re: ReiserFS? How reliable is it? Is this the future?

[Frank Fiene]

On Tuesday,  3. April 2001 14:13, Harald Dunkel wrote:
> Hi folks,
>
> If I get the DVD stuff working, then I won't need NT anymore, i.e.
> I will have an empty disk.
>
> What is your impression about ReiserFS? Does it work? Is it stable
> enough for my daily work, or is it something to try out and watch
> carefully? Do you use ReiserFS for your boot partition?
>
> Or should I try ext3 instead?

I am using reiserfs since kernel 2.2.14 or so.
It runs on my IBM Thinkpad without complications with kernel 2.4.3.
Same with a Compaq Proliant Server, kernel 2.4.2-ac28, two PIII and a 
hardware raid controller. I heard about complications with nfs.
I cannot see any speed improvements (maybe there are some beacause of 
the tree structure) but the file system check after a crash is much 
faster than with ext2.
It would be nice, if there are any hackers from the xfs, ext3 or jfs 
development team with some comparisons.

ff
-- 
Frank Fiene, SYNTAGS GmbH, Im Defdahl 5-10, D-44141 Dortmund, Germany
Security, Cryptography, Networks, Software Development
http://www.syntags.de mailto:Frank.Fiene@syntags.de

Re: ReiserFS? How reliable is it? Is this the future?

[Nicholas Petreley]

My Linux boxes are 99% Reiserfs (I work with 2 small ext2
partitions - the rest are Reiserfs partitions).  Some things
I have noticed:

The good (2.2 kernels):

* No problems at all using Reiserfs 3.5.x on 2.2 kernels
* Speed improvements using Reiserfs and squid
* No NFS problems
* Rollback of logs is extremely fast vs. fsck

The bad (2.2 kernels)

* Nothing I can think of

The bad (2.4.x kernels):

* Some corruption problems with various 2.4.x kernels, but
people are reporting ext2 problems, too, so this is
probably due at least in part to IDE/PCI chipset issues
* Some corruption problems if an application 
uses an nfs-mounted reiserfs partition during
an unexpected shutdown of the nfs server

The good (2.4.x kernels)

* Reisefsck --rebuild-tree works fine for me
when I get corruption problems

I haven't used Windows to do any work in years.  Just
games.  

-Nick

* Harald Dunkel (harri@synopsys.COM) [010403 05:17]:
> Hi folks,
> 
> If I get the DVD stuff working, then I won't need NT anymore, i.e.
> I will have an empty disk.
> 
> What is your impression about ReiserFS? Does it work? Is it stable
> enough for my daily work, or is it something to try out and watch
> carefully? Do you use ReiserFS for your boot partition?
> 
> Or should I try ext3 instead?
> 
> 
> Regards
> 
> Harri
> -
> To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
> the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
> More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
> Please read the FAQ at  http://www.tux.org/lkml/

-- 
**********************************************************
Nicholas Petreley   Caldera Systems - LinuxWorld/InfoWorld
nicholas@petreley.com - http://www.petreley.com - Eph 6:12
**********************************************************
.

Re: ReiserFS? How reliable is it? Is this the future?

[Alan Cox]

> The bad (2.2 kernels)
> 
> * Nothing I can think of

Security exploit according to bugtraq, but Im pretty sure it wont take Chris
Mason and friends long to fix that.

> The bad (2.4.x kernels):
> 
> * Some corruption problems with various 2.4.x kernels, but
> people are reporting ext2 problems, too, so this is
> probably due at least in part to IDE/PCI chipset issues

With the latest tail fixes Im fairly sure the remaining corruptions are not
reiserfs specific - but not yet 100% confident.

> * Some corruption problems if an application 
> uses an nfs-mounted reiserfs partition during
> an unexpected shutdown of the nfs server

(You want the NFS patches too)

Re: ReiserFS? How reliable is it? Is this the future?

[Xuan Baldauf]

Alan Cox wrote:

> > The bad (2.2 kernels)
> >
> > * Nothing I can think of
>
> Security exploit according to bugtraq, but Im pretty sure it wont take Chris
> Mason and friends long to fix that.
>

This is a reiserfs security issue, but only of theoretical nature (Even if
triggered, it won't harm you). But the reason for this bug is in NFS (v2, v3,
hopefully not also v4) readdir braindamage.

I think, in Reiser(FS)4, a more sophisticated (NFS-)work-around (horizontal
displacement instead of vertical displacement) is planned.

I can tell you more if you want.

Xuân.

Re: ReiserFS? How reliable is it? Is this the future?

[Alan Cox]

> This is a reiserfs security issue, but only of theoretical nature (Even i=
> f
> triggered, it won't harm you). But the reason for this bug is in NFS (v2,=

If the blocks contained my old /etc/shadow I'd be a bit upset.

> displacement instead of vertical displacement) is planned.
> 
> I can tell you more if you want.

I trust Chris to keep it in order. I've not yet had a broken patch from them
for -ac

Re: ReiserFS? How reliable is it? Is this the future?

[Xuan Baldauf]

Alan Cox wrote:

> > This is a reiserfs security issue, but only of theoretical nature (Even i=
> > f
> > triggered, it won't harm you). But the reason for this bug is in NFS (v2,=
>
> If the blocks contained my old /etc/shadow I'd be a bit upset.

The only bad consequence possible is that you possibly cannot create a file with
a given filename if someone else (remote user) could create at least 127 files
with a very special filename within the same directory. Usually, /etc/shadow and
all other important files either are created before any other user has access or
(if they are created later) belong to directories where only root may create
files in it.

>
>
> > displacement instead of vertical displacement) is planned.
> >
> > I can tell you more if you want.
>
> I trust Chris to keep it in order. I've not yet had a broken patch from them
> for -ac

:-)

Re: [PATCH] reiserfs old data bug 2.2.x (was: ReiserFS? How reliable ...)

[Chris Mason]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1262 bytes --]



On Thursday, April 05, 2001 02:13:55 AM +0100 Alan Cox
<alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk> wrote:

>> This is a reiserfs security issue, but only of theoretical nature (Even
>> i= f
>> triggered, it won't harm you). But the reason for this bug is in NFS
>> (v2,=
> 
> If the blocks contained my old /etc/shadow I'd be a bit upset.
> 

I think we're talking about different things here.  Alan, I think you are
referring to the ability to get old data in files during mmap.  Where the
exploit roughly looks like this:

truncate(file, 0)
truncate(file, X)
char *foo = mmap(file, X)
write(file, foo, X)

This should produce all zeros, but under 2.2.x reiserfs can instead include
old file data.  Turns out this is because during the write, the block
pointer is inserted before the newly allocated (and zero'd) buffer was set
up to date.  If a readpage is triggered when reiserfs_file_write calls
copy_from_user, you get the old data.  The fix is to mark the buffer up to
date right after zeroing.

Two patches attached, one for 3.5.32 (uptodate_hole.diff.gz) and one for
older reiserfs versions (uptodate_hole-old.diff.gz).  Both are small,
gzip'd because my mailer is dumb.

3.5.33 should come out soon with this included.  2.4.x reiserfs doesn't
need this patch.

-chris

[-- Attachment #2: uptodate_hole-old.diff.gz --]
[-- Type: application/x-gunzip, Size: 502 bytes --]

[-- Attachment #3: uptodate_hole.diff.gz --]
[-- Type: application/x-gunzip, Size: 234 bytes --]

Re: ReiserFS? How reliable is it? Is this the future?

[jury gerold]

I use reiserfs on
a) P3(450) machine 440BX/ZX Chipset 82371AB PIIX4 IDE UDMA33
b) athlon(1100) VIA KT133 something IDE UDMA33

On both of them i have spurious small file garbage problems
during compiling.

There was no situation with real trouble, no permanent damage,
restarting the job solved the problem all the time.

I could not find a real corrupt file on disk.
It seems to me like the corruption happens in memory only.
(just an impression)
The machine with less memory triggers it more likely.

On 2.4.3-pre6 a file that has not been changed for months
was sometimes not found.

I have no problems on the ext2 partitions.

Re: ReiserFS? How reliable is it? Is this the future?

[Shawn Starr]

I've had 0, Ziltch problems with ReiserFS at the moment. It's solid for
me.

On Tue, 3 Apr 2001, Harald Dunkel wrote:

> Hi folks,
>
> If I get the DVD stuff working, then I won't need NT anymore, i.e.
> I will have an empty disk.
>
> What is your impression about ReiserFS? Does it work? Is it stable
> enough for my daily work, or is it something to try out and watch
> carefully? Do you use ReiserFS for your boot partition?
>
> Or should I try ext3 instead?
>
>
> Regards
>
> Harri
> -
> To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
> the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
> More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
> Please read the FAQ at  http://www.tux.org/lkml/
>
>

Re: ReiserFS? How reliable is it? Is this the future?

[Ookhoi]

Hi Harald,

> If I get the DVD stuff working, then I won't need NT anymore, i.e.
> I will have an empty disk.
> 
> What is your impression about ReiserFS? Does it work? Is it stable
> enough for my daily work, or is it something to try out and watch
> carefully? Do you use ReiserFS for your boot partition?
> 
> Or should I try ext3 instead?

For me it is very stable on several servers and workstations, and for
quite some time now (since the kernel 2.3 series, had to watch the lists
for faulty combinations though). I never used kernel 2.2 with reiserfs
(3.5), but only 2.3 and 2.4 (and thus rfs 3.6). My newest workstation
and notebook have one partition (/) and thus reiserfs is root and boot
partition. On older ones it was necessary to have a small /boot
partition because of an older version of lilo. It is no use to have
reiserfs on /boot if it is small (which usually is the case), due to the
journal which is 32 meg.
The bigest point so far where the fsck tools, but they seem to be quite
usefull these days, and under active development.

	Ookhoi