Who is using reiser4 and with what success?

dtw · 2004-12-22 10:49:56

please answer the following questions if you are using or have at least tried reiser4:

1) how did you hear about reiser4 and why did you try it?
2) which kernel version and patches are you using to do so?
3) what fs were you using and why?
4) how was your transition?
5) have you had any serious problems that were DEFINITELY NOT caused by you being a dumbass (99% of my issues are due to this)
6) if you stopped using it - why?

this is not market research

neotuli · 2004-12-22 18:36:42

dibblethewrecker wrote:

please answer the following questions if you are using or have at least tried reiser4:
1) how did you hear about reiser4 and why did you try it?
2) which kernel version and patches are you using to do so?
3) what fs were you using and why?
4) how was your transition?
5) have you had any serious problems that were DEFINITELY NOT caused by you being a dumbass (99% of my issues are due to this)
6) if you stopped using it - why?
this is not market research

1- Here and from opticcow, because it sounded cool (try anything once)
2- 2.6.9 with nitro2 and 3, then 2.6.9 with cko3
3- Ext3..it was the default and actually still hanging around from my mandrake days (i switched over the /home partition)
4- Painless
5- No
6- Yes, stopped using it, someone wanted me to build beagle, which needs extended attributes to keep track of what it has indexed, and I couldn't find the reiser4 extended attributes, so i went back to ext3.

It was stable..for me, your milage may very well vary. I have heard of some pretty ugly experiences with it.
I sort of figured others might wanna try it, so I put libaal and reiser4progs in my repo. (see sig..you know the drill).
I suggest that if you want to try it, you do as I did, don't switch over anything critical like /, but instead switch over /home, or make a new partition just to try it.
As for the supposed speed diffs, meh, the regular desktop user really doesn't notice.

dtw · 2004-12-23 07:02:32

Thanks Neotuli - that really helps. If the speed diff is negligible why bother?! I know they are adding some serious crypto stuff to it also but if there is a chance it may foul up your system why bother until it is more mature?

I have separate /boot /var /home and / drives - I was already to move my root dir - i have already copied and checked I can boot into so that I can blank my original root device with reiser4 and copy it back. I can keep the back up of my / but it won't be long before it gets outdated and too much trouble to revert.

I suppose I could blank that spare part again and reformat wth reiser4 and copy my root there. is it possible to maintain two Arch / sharing one /var partition? I strongly doubt it!

iphitus · 2004-12-24 01:47:06

dibblethewrecker wrote:

please answer the following questions if you are using or have at least tried reiser4:

1) how did you hear about reiser4 and why did you try it?
I found out about it somewhere, maybe reading kerneltrap, or on IRC. A big new fs like this gets publicity. I'm not sure. I tried it because - a) it's had great reviews, and is known to be fast, b) I like being on the edge, c) it needs more testing for it to be included in the kernel.
2) which kernel version and patches are you using to do so?
Kernel 2.6.9 with Nitro patches 2. Im not sure why I havnt updated to Nitro 4 yet... I have also used a MM kernel and a vanilla with a reiser4 patch too.
3) what fs were you using and why?
ext3, because the one time I used reiser3, I had to clean install.
4) how was your transition?
simple. copy partition off, convert partition, copy partition back.
5) have you had any serious problems that were DEFINITELY NOT caused by you being a dumbass (99% of my issues are due to this)
none. reiser4 runs awesome, i've been using it for about 2 months now with no problems. It's fuckloads faster than ext3. I plan to convert more of my partitions to reiser4 when knoppix or a live cd that works on my computer actually works on my compy supports it.

6) if you stopped using it - why?
i havn't stop using it

this is not market research

suuuure

Neotuli: Im sure that extended attributes are built into reiser4, there isnt an extra option for them.

All: I've made an arch package of the nitro kernels - it has support for reiser4 so I'll test that and if it works ill upload it.

iphitus

neotuli · 2004-12-24 01:56:39

iphitus wrote:

Neotuli: Im sure that extended attributes are built into reiser4, there isnt an extra option for them.

Quite probable, but it still bitched about them, and I wanted to see if the software worked or not.

aCoder · 2004-12-24 06:10:38

1) how did you hear about reiser4 and why did you try it?
- These forums mostly, but the news was everywhere for a while. I tried it because it's what I do, I try things.

2) which kernel version and patches are you using to do so?
- 2.6.9-rc*-mm*, (sorry can't remeber exactly)

3) what fs were you using and why?
- ext3, stable stable, fast fast

4) how was your transition?
- ~, Actually moving my system was painless, but the kernel config was tough. It took me a while to figure out that the 4kb stack option was preventing reiser4 from showing up at all. I would've expected a little note or something in its place, telling me to turn 4kb stacks off.

5) have you had any serious problems that were DEFINITELY NOT caused by you being a dumbass (99% of my issues are due to this)
- No. I didn't have any problems. I actually went an entire week, during which time I used reiser4, without being a complete dumbass!

6) if you stopped using it - why?
- I stopped using it because I wiped out the box to try yet another distro, (probably Ubuntu at that time), and I've never really felt like I needed to again. Besides, in my experiences, there weren't any performance-related advantages over ext3, (nothing I noticed, at least), and this particular system isn't important enough to require something like an atomic filesystem. I just decided it wasn't worth the work the second time. That said, if it's ever in the Arch installer, I'll probably do a backup and a fresh Arch install with reiser4, but not until then.

itlain · 2004-12-25 02:01:58

I used it for a couple months but then had to switch back to just reiserfs. Had a rather serious problem. I'm deployed in Iraq and was runnign my laptop off a generator. We lost power and my battery happened not to be in my laptop. When I booted back up it gave me some odd error that node 2650345 (or something to that effect ) was at posistion 0 and it wouldn't boot up. Not having reiser4 support in the boot disk sort of sucks when you are trying to rescue your system.

Whenever I tried to run the fsck program it would recognize the fault when trying to rebuild the superblock and then segfault. Of course I ended up loosing everything the 2 times it happened.

On a good note I keep backups now though

dtw · 2004-12-26 07:45:49

cheers dude

iphitus · 2004-12-26 11:04:03

itlain wrote:

I used it for a couple months but then had to switch back to just reiserfs. Had a rather serious problem. I'm deployed in Iraq and was runnign my laptop off a generator. We lost power and my battery happened not to be in my laptop. When I booted back up it gave me some odd error that node 2650345 (or something to that effect ) was at posistion 0 and it wouldn't boot up. Not having reiser4 support in the boot disk sort of sucks when you are trying to rescue your system.
Whenever I tried to run the fsck program it would recognize the fault when trying to rebuild the superblock and then segfault. Of course I ended up loosing everything the 2 times it happened.
On a good note I keep backups now though

Thats wierd, my lappy's battery has died on me tonnes of times without a problem. Though I guess im using a never version, so whatever caused it might have been fixed ^-^

nosebleed · 2005-01-15 20:55:08

1) how did you hear about reiser4 and why did you try it?
- Don't remember where I heard it, and I tried it for the increased performance and I'm a guinea pig.

2) which kernel version and patches are you using to do so?
- 2.6.10-nitro4

3) what fs were you using and why?
- reiserfs, and I work with firefox source archives (cvs) which includes tons of small files

4) how was your transition?
-Extremely painful. I screwed my system three times. I read the wiki howto, and after reading that I've decided I'm going to change it to suit how I managed to change the transition (most of it is right, but according to the wiki, the guy switched his / and /home partitions, which I did, but after that I switched them back again). Also, that tutorial was written for devfs, and I kept getting the "Warning: unable to open initial console" stuff because I did mkdir dev, but forgot to add the console and null nodes. I booted to a gentoo livecd that supports reiser4 and fixed that. So I (or someone else can) add that.

5) have you had any serious problems that were DEFINITELY NOT caused by you being a dumbass (99% of my issues are due to this)
- Not yet.

6) if you stopped using it - why?
- Still using it.

dtw · 2005-01-16 03:57:19

cool - i compiled nitro4 with the security fix that has been added to the stock AL kernel - it hung on boot! i never had that with a kernel before will try without the patch and see what happens.

so gentoo livecd supports reiser4? that's good to know. how do you feel about adding to the wiki while using udev?

nosebleed · 2005-01-16 04:05:05

cool - i compiled nitro4 with the security fix that has been added to the stock AL kernel - it hung on boot! i never had that with a kernel before will try without the patch and see what happens.

I patched the stock kernel from kernel.org (I doubt there is much difference, besides the bootup logo)

dibblethewrecker wrote:

so gentoo livecd supports reiser4?

I don't think the official livecd yet supports it, but I got this unofficial one and it works fine. I attempted to remaster the current arch install cd to have support, but it seems to be quite a feat (for me, at least)

how do you feel about adding to the wiki while using udev?

I'm going to make some changes to reflect what I did (incl. the udev stuff) sometime soon, unless someone does it before I do.

dtw · 2005-01-17 08:34:07

i converted my /var partition to reiser4 to test it out. i figured that reiser4 is supposed to be good when handling lots of small files - well, in Arch var contains abs, which is lots of small files, and is also where i do all my compilation...

i ran a pacman -Qs command after i converted and and the results came up almost instantly - it blew my hair back!

jskier · 2005-01-25 14:22:54

please answer the following questions if you are using or have at least tried reiser4:

1) how did you hear about reiser4 and why did you try it?
Arch Fourms, yes.

2) which kernel version and patches are you using to do so?
2.6.10 custom kernel and patched with namesys reiser4 patch.

3) what fs were you using and why?
ext2,ext3 (both seemed faster then reiser3)

4) how was your transition?
Resized the ext3 down and made room for the reiser4- very easy process. Haven't done any benchmarks yet but it seems really smooth so far.

5) have you had any serious problems that were DEFINITELY NOT caused by you being a dumbass (99% of my issues are due to this)
No.

6) if you stopped using it - why?
Still going.

What happened to support for reiser4 in the .7 release anyway?

lucke · 2005-01-28 21:55:09

After recompiling kernel with reiser4 support (both morph and nitro patchsets), while booting my box reboots just after showing the vesafb stuff, right before the reiser stuff should appear. Anyone experienced such a problem?

Cheers,

lucke

ps. If you're looking for a kewl reiser4 enabled livecd, check grml. In my quest to find the best rescue/live cd I've stumbled upon it and seems that my search is over :-)

jskier · 2005-01-28 22:18:05

After recompiling kernel with reiser4 support (both morph and nitro patchsets), while booting my box reboots just after showing the vesafb stuff, right before the reiser stuff should appear. Anyone experienced such a problem?

Anything in the logs? I personally haven't used morph, but I did the nitro thing on my laptop with reiser4 and it worked flawlessly. Assuming you did it correctly it could have something to do with morph patchset.

Thanks for the livecd link by the way, haven't tried it but it looks very useful.

jskier · 2005-01-29 00:53:42

Anyone been able to resize reiserfs4? I tried it and got some superblock errors (thankfully no data loss) when using the live grml cd lucke recommended, and the Gentoo I haven't really figured out... I want to use the old space my ext3 partition occupied. If you have resized let me know how successful it was and how it was accomplished, thanks.

UPDATE:
I found out that I needed to do more to convert the superblocks which I did. I found a Gentoo post that claimed to be able to resize but my attempts state that is it not yet implemented.

LavaPunk · 2005-01-29 01:28:58

What happened to support for reiser4 in the .7 release anyway?

It was thought that 2.6.10 would include reiser4 support but it did not. Until reiser4 is released in the vanilla kernel it I do not think it will be included in the Arch Linux installer.

dtw · 2005-01-29 08:49:04

i think the resier4 patches in -nitro and -cko might be at the root of a hard lock up on my system

iphitus · 2005-01-29 15:25:04

dibblethewrecker wrote:

i think the resier4 patches in -nitro and -cko might be at the root of a hard lock up on my system

running ck5+reiser4 without any lockups

so its another patch

dtw · 2005-01-30 12:01:57

well, i made the same build and it does lock up - so, it does lock up with the patch and doesn't without the patch - therefore it's the patch - more precisely it's the patch AND my config but for me it's the patch

vegai · 2005-01-31 20:58:24

Always a happy quizzer 8)

dibblethewrecker wrote:

please answer the following questions if you are using or have at least tried reiser4:
1) how did you hear about reiser4 and why did you try it?

I used reiserfs since before *it* was out of experimental status, so I had been following namesys closely for a long time before Reiser4 was publicized.

dibblethewrecker wrote:

2) which kernel version and patches are you using to do so?

I'm using manually compiled 2.6.10-nitro4, because everything I tried before that (which includes at least mm-something) failed to work with my NVidia.

dibblethewrecker wrote:

3) what fs were you using and why?

Ext3, but I tried all the other too before that. R4 seems fun, and is fast.

dibblethewrecker wrote:

4) how was your transition?

I installed Arch with archbootstrap using my Gentoo Reiser4-enabled CD. In retrospect, I'm pretty amazed that it worked (and it does)

dibblethewrecker wrote:

5) have you had any serious problems that were DEFINITELY NOT caused by you being a dumbass (99% of my issues are due to this)

I used to try the alpha-versions, which had some trouble. However, you might consider that being a dumbass...

dibblethewrecker wrote:

6) if you stopped using it - why?

There was a short time when I used ext3 because none of the kernels+patchsets seemed to like the combination Reiser4+nvidia. But as I said, with nitro, everything's fine now.

khazdar · 2005-03-07 15:37:33

Whats the best approach for perfoming a new install on a Reiser4 filesystem?

Thanks,
-Khaz

sorcerer · 2005-03-07 17:05:54

I used the archbootstrap script to install arch on a reiser4 partition, works like a charm.

Before this i used gentoo on reiser4 aswell.
right now i'm running 2.6.11-morph1.

I've also used 2.6.10-{nitro4,morph{0..24}} and older versions with reiser4, never had any real problems, needed an complete rebuild once, but this was with an pretty old kernel 2.6.0 or 2.6.1 i think, and all data was still there after the rebuild.

Arch Linux

#1 2004-12-22 10:49:56

Who is using reiser4 and with what success?

#2 2004-12-22 18:36:42

Re: Who is using reiser4 and with what success?

#3 2004-12-23 07:02:32

Re: Who is using reiser4 and with what success?

#4 2004-12-24 01:47:06

Re: Who is using reiser4 and with what success?

#5 2004-12-24 01:56:39

Re: Who is using reiser4 and with what success?

#6 2004-12-24 06:10:38

Re: Who is using reiser4 and with what success?

#7 2004-12-25 02:01:58

Re: Who is using reiser4 and with what success?

#8 2004-12-26 07:45:49

Re: Who is using reiser4 and with what success?

#9 2004-12-26 11:04:03

Re: Who is using reiser4 and with what success?

#10 2005-01-15 20:55:08

Re: Who is using reiser4 and with what success?

#11 2005-01-16 03:57:19

Re: Who is using reiser4 and with what success?

#12 2005-01-16 04:05:05

Re: Who is using reiser4 and with what success?

#13 2005-01-17 08:34:07

Re: Who is using reiser4 and with what success?

#14 2005-01-25 14:22:54

Re: Who is using reiser4 and with what success?

#15 2005-01-28 21:55:09

Re: Who is using reiser4 and with what success?

#16 2005-01-28 22:18:05

Re: Who is using reiser4 and with what success?

#17 2005-01-29 00:53:42

Re: Who is using reiser4 and with what success?

#18 2005-01-29 01:28:58

Re: Who is using reiser4 and with what success?

#19 2005-01-29 08:49:04

Re: Who is using reiser4 and with what success?

#20 2005-01-29 15:25:04

Re: Who is using reiser4 and with what success?

#21 2005-01-30 12:01:57

Re: Who is using reiser4 and with what success?

#22 2005-01-31 20:58:24

Re: Who is using reiser4 and with what success?

#23 2005-03-07 15:37:33

Re: Who is using reiser4 and with what success?

#24 2005-03-07 17:05:54

Re: Who is using reiser4 and with what success?

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