ReiserFS Question

[Daedra]

Ok, i have a two hard drivers in my system, 1 is running WinME, and the other Slack 7.1, my question is i want to try out ReiserFS, ive already got it compiled into my kernel, etc. etc., is it possible to copy the entire contents of my linux drive to my FAT32 (WinME drive) then once ive got reiserFS going copy them back to my linux drive?

thanks http://www.linuxnewbie.org/ubb/smile.gif

[milanuk]

Interesting problem... I'd assume that you intend to copy your home directory and config files, not the whole thing? Then do a reinstall, changing to ReiserFS, and copy the files back? If you run Windows, you have a good chance of Windows either a) getting severe indigestion from the filenames and what not, or b) Windows corrupting your file names irreversibly. The length isn't the issue, it's the multiple '.'s that Windows doesn't like. Maybe back up your key files, compress them into one big .tgz file so Windows never touches them, and copy the .tgz over.

Just an idea or two,

Monte

[Daedra]

I'll do what ever it takes, do you know of any good NHF for this subject?

[Craig McPherson]

No, you can't (easily) use a ReiserFS filesystem for your root filesystem unless the distro you're using includes ReiserFS support in the stock kernel and in the installation software. Only Mandrake does this, as far as I know.

However, you can have all your other Linux partitions as ReiserFS partitions. Of course, you probably just have one giant root partition. Figured.

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[This message has been edited by Craig McPherson (edited 29 November 2000).]

[milanuk]

Originally posted by Daedra:

I'll do what ever it takes, do you know of any good NHF for this subject?

Not really. But like Craig mentions below, most times the stock linux kernel won't load from a ReiserFS partition. So the easiest thing to do is to make a small 5-10MB /boot partition, keep that ext2, and then make your ReiserFS partitions for everything else. That way the kernel itself is still on an ext2 partition which it natively supports, and your data is on a journalling FS. But I don't think you'll be able to copy everything over and back, I would try making a copy of things you absolutely can't lose, like /home and other config files you've slaved over from /etc and whatnot, and make a big tarball out of them and stick them in a windows partition. Hell, you could make a big tar.bz2 ball and just change the nambe to a three character extension to copy it to Windows, and change it back to .tar.bz2 before you restore it. Make sure your new kernel has support for reading vfat (fat32) partitions, or you won't be able to get to the tarball http://www.linuxnewbie.org/ubb/wink.gif

Monte

[:strain:]

FAT32 will be a problem, because of the lack of file permissions on FAT. Therefore if you just copy all your files to your FAT32 partition all the permissions will be lost. Resulting in a very broken system. The solution would be to tar up your existing system preserving file permissions, kernel and all, basically freeze your system in that state, making sure the kernel contains reiserfs support compiled INTO the kernel, or that your root partition is EXT2 and EXT2 is in the kernel so that the reiserfs module can load. You would need a floppy based distro that can format your partitions reiserfs, and then untar your filesystems back onto the newly formatted reiserfs partition. It would be rather difficult to do this, as reiserfs is not exactly de facto yet.

On a side note, i think i found a root/kernel disk for a slackware 7.1 a while ago made independatly for using slack with reiserfs. If I find the link, I will post with it.

Good Luck.

[Craig McPherson]

Actually... if you ever need to move files to a FAT partition temprarily but don't want to screw up the permissions and ownership, just tar them up, check the tar manpage for the options that preserve ownership and permissions (I don't remember them off the top of my head), and move the tar file to the FAT partition. The stuff will be safe there; then you can untar it back into its proper place, with permissions intact.

[pipe]

I installed Debian on reiserfs last weekend using the floppies from here:
http://www.psouth.net/~jjk/projects/reiser-debian/

All partitions (/, usr, home, var) are reiser except a 15MB ext2 /boot. Not a bad way to spend a rainy day indoors. I had just gotten a new 30 gig drive and a Promise Ultra100 controller and my plan was to move my original woody install over to the new reiser partitions. I decided instead to merge all my archived packages and reinstall with apt and just move over /home.

[jbstew32]

The only distro that i have seen that natively supports ReiserFS is Mandrake 7.1+ and I still have not tried (although it might be very cool http://www.linuxnewbie.org/ubb/smile.gif

As time goes on, it will no doubt become more standard and replace ext2.

[pipe]

Actually, I believe SuSE 6.4 was the first to have a reiserfs install option. Dr. Suse did a mini-review of it back in April.

[Shad]

If reiserfs is compiled into the kernel (ie not as a module), it is possible to convert all your partions over to reiserfs. The Harddisk mini-howto will prove invaluable for how to do this. I will tell you that it is much easier to do with a Distro with native support like SuSE or Mandrake.

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