Fresh install of Debian w/ ReiserFS?

[Droo]

Although I like the machine I've had for over 2.5 years, I've decided that the low hardware prices are too good to ignore so I'm going to upgrade.

I'm getting a 40GB HD, so I want to format it as ReiserFS. I'm using Woody right now and want to put it on my new machine. :cool: Debian :cool:

From my limited understanding I can use unofficial boot disks that will allow me to install potato with ReiserFS. Is this true? Has anyone here done this?

If this is the case, I'll probably do a limited install of potato and apt-get dist-upgrade to woody. Sound like a plan?

[Craig McPherson]

Yes, you can use the unofficial ReiserFS boot disks.

However, that's not what I'd do. I'd make a very small (200MB) root filesystem as ext2, and install the base system to it. I'd then recompile the kernel with ReiserFS support, migrate /var, /home, and /usr to ReiserFS partitions, then install all the packages I want.

Do it however you like, though.

[Droo]

So you leave / as ext2?

[recluse]

What are the advantages and disadvantages of ReiserFS?

-geordan

[Craig McPherson]

Droo:

Yes, I leave / as Ext2. There are a few reasons I think this is okay (or even good):

1. If you're using seperate /usr, /var, and /home partitions, then / will hardly be used for anything after boot-time anyway.

2. You can mount / as read-only except when doing system upgrades, so that it can't be damaged by a crash anyway.

3. You can use the Immutable flag on files in /etc, which I consider very important (ReiserFS doesn't support Attributes).

4. If you ever have to mount your system using a boot disk to be repairs, you'll be able to mount your root filesystem even if the boot disk doesn't support ReiserFS.

But if you want pure-ReiserFS, that's fine. Use the ReiserFS boot disks. I personally need Immutable flags in /etc, so I can't make my root filesystem ReiserFS. It rocks for /var, though.

Geordan:

ReiserFS is very cool. From just a non-technical perspective, it's much faster. If you get into the technical specs, there are some really revolutionary things about it, but most of them are meaningless to me and anyone else who hasn't done advanced filesystem program.

The second big difference that matters to the users is that it's a journaling filesystem. This means that it's impossible for the filesystem to be damaged by a crash or power failure, and that the filesystem doesn't have to be fscked after an improper shutdown.

Potential disadvantages:

1. Although stability is good, it's still technically "under development" and hasn't had five years of stress-testing like Ext2 has. Some people have lost filesystems, although such a thing is very rare. As usual, back up your stuff.

2. Support has to be built into the kernel. Every kernel you encounter will have Ext2 support, but not ReiserFS support.

3. No Attribute support (most people don't know what attributes are, so not really a big deal), and no way to choose between bsd and sysv ownership mode.

All problems that can be avoided with planning. So yeah, use it. It's cool

[Droo]

Well I decided to try out this process on my old machine to see how it would go.

I'm probably missing something obvious here b/c I can now mount partitions as reiser but I can't see any files in them.

Here's what I did.

- Base install potato r2
- Installed and compiled 2.4.5
- Installed reiserfsprogs

Then mount -t reiserfs /dev/hda9 /home and it mounts but now I can't see my home folders.

This is probably a stupid RTFM I'm missing and I'll keep poking around, but in case I don't find it...

[Craig McPherson]

Not stupid, but fairly simple to fix.

First, I recommend you boot into single-user mode, or at least shut down X and any other programs that don't need to be running. It'll make this easier.

This is how you move stuff on the root filesystem over to a new partition:

1. Mount the new partition in a temporary location, like /newhome

2. Copy (using cp -ra) everything from /home into /newhome

3. Move /home out of the way (don't delete it yet)... ie "mv /home /oldhome"

4. Unmount /newhome, and mount the new partition (which now contains everything /home did) as /home.

5. Update your fstab.

5. Test it out. Once you're sure everything was copied over properly, you can delete the /oldhome backup.

You do the same for your other partitions.

[Droo]

Yeah it does help to copy stuff over to the new partitions. A big "duh" to me.

[Linuxcool]

From man page for mount:

mount -t type device dir

This tells the kernel to attach the file system found on device (which is of type type) at the directory dir. The previous contents (if any) and owner and mode of dir become invisible, and as long as this file system remains mounted, the pathname dir refers to the root of the file system on device

That's what happened to all your files.

[Droo]

Yeah I was just being a jackass. I realized that I had forgotten to actually move the files to the Reiser partitions so I basically did what Craig did, except I created usr, var, home, and tmp directories under a /reiser mount point and moved the corresponding directories out of /. Edit fstab and voila, reiser is up and running.