# Reiser4 Woes

## StarCat76

Alright, this may take a bit to fully describe my situation.

I was using reiserfs for my root partition.  People were saying that Reiser4 was good, so I decided to switch to it.  This is how I did so:

Booted into knoppix.

Used resize_reiserfs to resize my partition to less than half of the entire size of the disc.

Used fdisk to recreate the partion, ending a little after where the    filesystem did.  Create a new partiton from the end of that partition to the end of the disc.

Booted back to gentoo.

Used mkfs.reiser4 to create a reiser4 filesystem on the 2nd partition.

Copied everything over to there (cp -a -x / /mnt/reiser4).

Booted into that partition.

Created Reiser4 filesystem on first partiton, copied everything back.

In knoppix set the 1st partition till the end of disk.  Tried to use resizefs.reiser4 to resize it, got 

"ERR: Not Implemented".  Damn, alright, I'll live with half the room till they implement that.

Boot into 1st one, live.

That's esssentially how I got it going, though I'm not sure whether that's relevant.  Alright, here's the prob.  Whenever I try to merge certain packages, the computer freezes, hard.  At the same spot every time.  Ex: PHP.  

When it happens, the merge stops.  Any 'sync' command stalls and is unkillable.  Withing a minute or so, the computer will be dead, as in no Alt-SysRq-B dead.  If I reboot into knoppix and fsck the drive, it usually finds errors, which I always fix.  Boot back into gentoo, same thing.

What I've tried: A lot.

Upgraded from 2.6.7-rc3-love2 to 2.6.7-r7-love7.  Same thing.  If I renice the threads up to -19 as is stated in the ebuild, the php ebuild is killed straight off.  Other ebuilds kill the system, though.

Booted into redeeman's love live-cd.  Fsck it, mount it, chroot into it, emerge php, regardless of niceness of threads, system's dead as a doornail.

I'm out of ideas.  What all can you suggest, besides yelling "Damn!" and trying to go back to ReiserFS?

         -Neil

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## _danno

are you using the latest libaal and reiser4progs? I had the same problem about three weeks ago, which all went away after i installed libaal-5.2 and reiser4progs-0.5.5 while chrooted from the live cd into my reiser4 partition.  It was a while ago, so your probably using the newer versions but just an idea

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## petrjanda

I installed Gentoo on a reiser4 /, so far i don't notice any weirdness, other than that which can be ascribed to the kernel source i am using, redeeman10, i don't like that it uses mm-sources, it has a lot of unstable code. For example my mouse sometiems becomes jerky.

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## StarCat76

I checked, and I am indeed using reiser4progs .5.5 and libaal .5.2.  So I guess that's probably not the problem.  Thanks for replying though.

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## teutzz

run this: 

```
pgrep hdXY | xargs renice -19
```

, where hdXY points to your reiser4 partition, and add this to your boot loader append line 

```
rootflags=nopseudo
```

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## boroshan

I've been having similar problems. I didn't find nopseudo helped either

Luckily, my data is in /home which is still R3, and I still have my old R3 root partition as well. I can see me migrating back until things stabilise a bit. I don't mind a bit of instability, but persistent repeatable hangs on compilation are pretty much a show stopper.

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## teutzz

well, i have root and boot partition with reiser4 (using lilo) and i really have no problems... i really mean... none!!!   :Smile: 

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## boroshan

what kernel are you running? I have my doubts about some of the recent mm/love releases...

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## petrjanda

I think i finally found a working kernel for me...2.6.7-love8-ck5

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## teutzz

currently 2.6.7-love7 (in my opinnion the best love since 2.6.6-love, but didn´t  had the time to try out 2.6.7-love8); but YMMV

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## spb

 *teutzz wrote:*   

> run this: 
> 
> ```
> pgrep hdXY | xargs renice -19
> ```
> ...

 Slightly more automated one; I have this in local.start:

```
mount |awk '/reiser4/{gsub("/dev/","",$1); system("pgrep "$1"|xargs renice -19")}' >/dev/null
```

I had the exact same problems; that fixed it for me.

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## petrjanda

 *thebell wrote:*   

>  *teutzz wrote:*   run this: 
> 
> ```
> pgrep hdXY | xargs renice -19
> ```
> ...

 

hmm before i put it there, what does it do exactly? the part thart says /reiser4/

----------

## boroshan

it basically greps your mounts for reiser4 partitions and then renices the userspace programs that manage those partitions. Take a look at the awk man page - its an incredibly useful scripting tool

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## spb

 *petrjanda wrote:*   

> hmm before i put it there, what does it do exactly? the part thart says /reiser4/

 

Takes the output of 'mount', ie a list of mounted filesystems. For every line containing 'reiser4' (that's the /reiser4/; it does a regex match on each line, and executes the following { } block for every line that matches it), takes the first string (seperated by spaces) (that's the $1). This will be the device node that's mounted. Then removes '/dev/' from the string, leaving you with just the 'hdXY' portion (that's the gsub function). Then executes 'pgrep hdXY |xargs renice 19' for that device name (the system() call), redirecting the output to null. Net result: renices all the processes managing any mounted reiser4 partition.

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## StarCat76

I do have the pgrep renicer as part of my startup scripts, but that didn't seem to help ; things just died in different ways.  I'm trying out the rootflags=nopseudo thing right now and will update you.

Two more things:

Where is 2.6.7-love8?  I haven't seen anything past love7.

And, when I use resizefs.reiser4 on the partition, version .5.5, if I, say, do

resizefs.reiser4 /dev/hda3 105G

it just gi and ves me the usage as if I gave it too many args.  If I don't give it the size, it complains about that too.  I've tried pretty much any way I can think of, without it working.  Ideas?

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## StarCat76

I tried with 2.6.7-love7 and rootflags=nopseudo.  Now, when I try to emerge php, it confgures, starts to compile, then is mysterously killed.  After the first compile command, it just says that make in php-java.jar I think it is Killed, and quits.  No error message, nothing.  Perhaps the kernel's killing it for some reason?  This now happens regardless of whether the reiser4 threads are niced to -19.[/code]

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## Isaiah

 *StarCat76 wrote:*   

> Where is 2.6.7-love8?  I haven't seen anything past love7.

 

2.6.7-love8  :Wink: 

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## teutzz

i really don´t think this a reiser4 connected problem, but i must admit i have no clue why this happens (ie been using reiser 4 on my root partition for 3 months now and i even did an emerge -e world during this time)

p.s. do you have use larger_keys enabled under reiser4 filesystem options in kernel config (it must be enabled) and larger_keys reiser4 is bynary incompatible with small_keys reiser4

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## StarCat76

It seems weird, some people have no probs with Reiser4, for me, nothing but problems.  Yes, I am using larger keys in both the kernel config and the filesystem.  Here is the output of debugfs.reiser4 /dev/hda3:

debugfs.reiser4 0.5.5

Copyright (C) 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004 by Hans Reiser, licensing governed by reiser4progs/COPYING.

Master super block (16):

magic:          ReIsEr4

blksize:        4096

format:         0x0 (format40)

uuid:           a51d4ff3-205e-499b-9353-d53978fa92ce

label:          <none>

Format super block (17):

plugin:         format40

description:    Disk-format for reiser4, ver. 0.5.5

magic:          ReIsEr40FoRmAt

flushes:        0

mkfs id:        0x5c7101ec

blocks:         29145926

free blocks:    21355155

root block:     6668972

tail policy:    0x2 (smart)

next oid:       0x1b803d

file count:     277905

tree height:    4

key policy:     LARGE

FS status block (21):

FS marked consistent

I will try love8.

----------

## StarCat76

I am using love8, and it is still occurring.  Dang.

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## MrApples

i just had this same problem, i tried love8, love8-ck5, and xx, none of which worked

im moving back to reiserfs right now   :Confused: 

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## boroshan

I'm on R4/love8 with all process reniced and passing nopseudo and all of a sudden, everything works again. 

The trouble seems to have been a borked config somwehere in the last few kernel upgrades. Since then it all seems to run fine...

Wish I knew what I did to snafu it in the first place...  :Sad: 

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## coutts99

I tired Reiser 4 and it just segfaulted both machines I had it running on.

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## _Adik_

 *petrjanda wrote:*   

>  *thebell wrote:*    *teutzz wrote:*   run this: 
> 
> ```
> pgrep hdXY | xargs renice -19
> ```
> ...

 

i had the same problem as @StarCat76 had but renicing fixed it!~

tnx for tips! reiser4 is REALLY DAMN FAST  :Twisted Evil: 

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## MrApples

i tried all the renicing and nopseudo suggestions and they didnt make a difference for me

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## boroshan

Check your config - in particular I cleared 4K stacks and register parameters.

I'm not saying they were causing the problems, mind, but it's worth looking at

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## MrApples

i dont recall whether or not i changed 4k stacks, anyway, im back to reiserfs, perhaps ill give reiser4 another shot sometime

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## StarCat76

I just made it back into two partitions, moved all the stuff to a new reiser4 partition on the second, moved it all back to a new one I created on the place where the first was, boot into the 1st one, bam, same probs.  Maybe I'll just go back to reiserfs for a few months.

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## StarCat76

Alright folks, I have buckled under, given up and moved back to ReiserFS, at least for the time being.  Thanks for giving me all the tips.

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## mirko_3

I've run into the same problem with php, with reiser4 reniced... about to try nopseudo, but one question: does it have any performance penalties?

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## aslocum

i have tried all (i believe) tips here but everytime kernel oops after a while. 

tried with love and redeeman sources. 

switched back to jfs/xfs ... maybe give it a try when ist official stable

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## 0n0w1c

I am experiencing stalls/hangs while emerging (php, openoffice, & one of the gnustep-base pkgs). I have seen posts refering to these issues. Is there a fix/workaround for this issue other than changing filesystems? I am using a scsi-2 drive with a lvm2 volume group (a single partition) formatted as Reiser4 mounted as /var/tmp/portage. The rest of my filesystem XFS. I have reniced the Reiser4 process to -19 but I am not using the nopsudo option and I am running the latest xx-sources.

Other than the hangs, I have been pleased the performance and would change to a total Reiser4 system if I can get a config that will not hang.

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## wrc1944

My problem was nothing would work WITHOUT large keys enabled- I heeded the warning, but couldn't even get through making a file system. So, once I got a reiser4 box up and stable with large keys, I've not changed my kernel config. I have a lot of kernels that work OK, best so far is xx1. ck6 had serious problems. For me, Large keys pose no problem, notwithstanding the warning. I don't get it- if you don't use large keys, it fails, but if you do, it works! 

Hmmmm..  Maybe my thoughts on this are obsolete, and the large keys problem has been fixed. I am using the latest snapshot, on the latest kernels, so maybe I missed something..

wrc1944

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## boroshan

 *0n0w1c wrote:*   

> I am experiencing stalls/hangs while emerging (php, openoffice, & one of the gnustep-base pkgs). I have seen posts refering to these issues. 
> 
> Other than the hangs, I have been pleased the performance and would change to a total Reiser4 system if I can get a config that will not hang.

 

have a look here for a solution to the PHP problem. Openoffice sticks (at least when I do it) on the install phase. I managed to dodge that one by using 

```
ebuld /path/to/openoffic.ebuild install

ebuld /path/to/openoffic.ebuild merge
```

It took a couple of attempts, but you only need to download and/or compile it once, and it works just fine now

The Gnustep stuff I have no idea about. Maybe one of the approaches above will help

----------

## 0n0w1c

I can get around the problem easily enough, I simply dismount the drive and emerge on XFS. I do not know what the bug is, that anyone does for that matter, or that a *fix* exists. Until I know more about it, this is showstopper for me as far as moving to a Reiser4 only system.

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## 0n0w1c

wrc1944,

I do have large keys enabled. I have read most everything in the forums on Reiser4 and it appears my system is setup correctly. The filesystem seems stable along with the system as a whole, until I try to emerge a few specific packages which fail in a consistent manner on multiple computers. I have been monitoring the Reiser4 changelog of the daily snapshots and the activity does not indicate a serious problem.

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## Calchan

 *boroshan wrote:*   

>  *0n0w1c wrote:*   I am experiencing stalls/hangs while emerging (php, openoffice, & one of the gnustep-base pkgs). I have seen posts refering to these issues. 
> 
> Other than the hangs, I have been pleased the performance and would change to a total Reiser4 system if I can get a config that will not hang. 
> 
> have a look here for a solution to the PHP problem. Openoffice sticks (at least when I do it) on the install phase. I managed to dodge that one by using 
> ...

 

I did that on one of my machines while trying to install openoffice a couple of weeks ago. "ebuild ... install" a few times hoping to do an "ebuild ... qmerge" and "ebuild ... clean" later. Unfortunatly one of the crashes was harder than the others and screwed up my root partition. Since then, on other machines, I temporarily move /var/tmp/portage to a reiserfs or ext3 partition, and switch back when done. I'm in the process of reverting the more sensitive machines to reiserfs. Although I have backups, I'm tired of reinstalling and manually modifying patched kernel patches.

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## Bombs14

 *Quote:*   

> "ERR: Not Implemented". Damn, alright, I'll live with half the room till they implement that.
> 
> Boot into 1st one, live. 

 

there's a thread out there somewhere that says that resize option is not in there, because the developers need money.

as for your freezing, like said before me, changing from 4k stacks to 8k stacks in kernel is a possible fix.

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## Redeeman

to fix this, run the latest stable snapshot, or newer, its included in my latest redeeman-sources....

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## Redeeman

and btw, 4k stacks works here

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## Gentree

Running  2.6.8.1-xx1 here, 8k stacks ; larger_keys  : NO R4 probs at all.

Just recompiling mozilla on the R4 partition at the same time as cp -a * from that partition to another on reiserfs.

ie full power , heavy use. Solid as a rock.

Seems the key factor is getting a well sorted kernel set and setting a couple of options.

I really should get around to trying redeeman's offering , it looks to have even more fixes than xx1 , but I have to find time to actually USE the computer as well !!

 :Cool: 

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## Gentree

Running  2.6.8.1-xx1 here, 8k stacks ; larger_keys  : NO R4 probs at all.

Just recompiling mozilla on the R4 partition at the same time as cp -a * from that partition to another on reiserfs and listening to mp3 and posting this.

ie full power , heavy use. Solid as a rock.

Seems the key factor is getting a well sorted kernel set and setting a couple of options.

I really should get around to trying redeeman's offering , it looks to have even more fixes than xx1 , but I have to find time to actually USE the computer as well !!

 :Cool: 

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