-----Original Message----- From: Carlos E. R. [mailto:robin1.listas@tiscali.es] Sent: Monday, December 26, 2005 6:39 PM To: SLE Subject: RE: [SLE] Problems with initrd after mkinitrd

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The Monday 2005-12-26 at 20:18 -0500, Patrick Freeman wrote:

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Is there maybe in issue with the way Reiserfs handles this update such that sometimes it writes the new file to a place which is not accessible during boot?

It is not, I think, a problem peculiar to reiserfs, but to large partitions. If the partition is large, the file may fall in any place of it - of course - but perchance at a track that the bios has problem in accessing (which is my hypothesis).

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Thanks to you both (Carl and Carlos) for the insightful questions -- I think I am going to look at where the files (intird) are written on the disk between failing nodes and non-failing nodes. Do you have any input on what the simplest tool would be to see physical disk location with Reiserfs? (debugreiserfs -m )?

No... sorry, I'd have to find out as well. Perhaps "-o"

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Anyway, if that is true -- perhaps the solution is to use a separate partition for/boot (which would also allow using a different filesystem for /boot). I don't see any reason why Reiserfs would be at issue, other than this, but what are your opinions (Carl and Carlos or anyone else) on using a separate /boot partition and also for using Reiserfs as the /boot filesystem?

You can not use reiserfs on a separate /boot partition for some reasons, but the main one is that it is usually a very small partition, one or two tracks only, around 20 Mb - and reiserfs needs a minimum of 100Mb. Typically /boot is formatted as ext2 (not ext3), which is also quite easy to read; the kernel has support compiled in, not as a module.

If you do create that partition, place it below track number 1024, just in case that is the problem.

- -- Cheers, Carlos Robinson -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.0 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Made with pgp4pine 1.76

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Thanks, I'm going to initiate a couple of experiments which will take me a couple of days -- as I will have to coordinate the resources coming available -- and I will report back with my findings. Regards, PATRICK FREEMAN, SYSTEMS SPECIALIST Work: (949) 330-7699 Fax: (949) 330-7691 patrickf@datallegro.com www.datallegro.com Confidential: The information in this email is confidential and may be legally privileged. It is intended solely for the addressee. Access to this email by anyone else is unauthorized.