[Gllug] Reiserfs gotchas?

[Stephen Harker]

On Thu, 2002-05-09 at 10:24, Rev Simon Rumble wrote:
> Hi folks.
> 
> I've just re-installed Debian (from potato CDs and upgraded) after a
> hard disk failure.  I figure it's time to join the journaled
> revolution and see what this reiserfs thing is all about.
> 
> So I'll outline the process by which I'll make this move.  Can people
> who've used reiserfs let me know of any gotchas or mistakes in my
> thinking?
> 
> I have six partitions on the main drive.  I've only mounted and
> installed on the first (/dev/hde1 ext2) one and formatted the others with
> mkreiserfs.
> 
> 1) Boot from rescue business card CD that supports reiserfs
> 2) Mount /dev/hde1
> 3) Mount one of the reiserfs drives
> 4) cp -a from the old one to the reiserfs one.
> 5) Reformat /dev/hde1 reiserfs and mount
> 6) Copy everything back
> 7) Reboot

You will have to make an initrd RamDisk image for the kernel to get the
reiserfs module from as its too big to build into the kernel statically
(which kernel by the way 2.2 or 2.4). You then need an
"initrd=/boot/initrd.img" line in lilo.conf. Otherwise, when you reboot,
the kernel will not be able to mount the root partition. Whereas if you
use ext3, it will be able to mount it OK. Try ext3 as well.

> I'm running Debian testing (i.e., nearly Woody) and have the reiser
> tools installed.  According to the changelog, lilo won't have any
> problems (besides which, /boot is still on an ext2 drive /dev/hda3).

Lilo doesn't care what the filesystem is, it just goes to the
appropriate sector on the HD. The problem you will have is that the
kernel without access to its modules, will not be able to mount the root
partition if it is reiserfs. 

Steve


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