Dear Jeff, Thanks for prompt reply and detailed explanation. The reason I believed ReiserFS (endian-safe PPC version) had a misconfiguration bug (transaction replay on read-only mounted volume) was simple - after hard MOL crash some files on ReiserFS have been badly damaged (they do existed but contained garbage). So, my conclusion was that transaction replay did not performed correctly. Additionally, reiserfsck invoked imediately after booting clearly stated "Warning: transaction replay on read-only volume". PS. I solved MOL crash problem, see my posting on mailing list. with best regards Andrei Verovski
I found misconfiguration bug in PPC ReiserFS package. After crash ReiserFS transaction replay performed on read-only mounted volume, thus, all garbage on file system being left.
Andrei -
After a brief conversation with Chris Mason, he explained to me that there is "no such thing" as a read only ReiserFS. Sure, it will not let you write to it as a user, but in order to mount a valid filesystem, the journal must be replayed. Without the journal replay, the filesystem is simply not valid on its own.
For example, if there was a write to the disk, the tree was rebalanced, and the root of the tree may have moved. This is a common occurance.
There is a method for a truly "read only" mount, which still uses the journal in a semi-transparent manner, but nobody has written it yet (outside of bootloaders). The ReiserFS team has been concentrating more on stability than anything else.
******************************************************** * Best Regards --- Andrei Verovski * * e-mail --- andrei.verovski@bigfoot.com * * * * Personal Home Page * * http://homepage.mac.com/macgurutemple/ * ********************************************************