Re: [gentoo-user] Corruption in reiserfs partition

[Volker Armin Hemmann <volker.armin.hemmann@tu-clausthal.de>]

On Sonntag, 9. September 2007, Jorge Peixoto de Morais Neto wrote:
> On 9/8/07, Volker Armin Hemmann <volker.armin.hemmann@tu-clausthal.de>

>
> > 2) Do you think I should just use the computer, after reemerging the
> >
> > > packages that provide the corrupted files?
> >
> > yes
>
> Do you think that there is any plausible chance that using the partition
> might cause further damage?

if there isn't a hardware problem - very probably not. I have had very good 
experiences with reiserfsck (for 3.6) and fsck.reiser4 (with reiser4). If the 
fs got fixed, it is fixed.
If the disk is damaged, than reinstalling from scratch won't help you anyway.

> > ln  -s busybox rm
>
> Gentoo should have an automated way to do this. For me, it looks like there
> should be an eselect option for "activating" busybox.

no, it shouldn't. I tried it a few weeks ago - replaced most of /bin with 
symlinks to busybox. Emerging stuff still worked - but a handfull of 
init-scripts stopped working in the worst way - they just hung after spitting 
out some error messages. So using busybox should be something that is hard to 
do - to prevent unsuspecting users from problems. In case of emergency you 
can always boot into busybox with the right kernel boot parameter.


>
> > I hope you learned your lessons!
> >
> > Lesson 1: /home on its own partition.
>
> I read somewhere that most of the time when a disk fails it will take all
> of its partitions with it, so putting /home is its own partition does not
> help.

if your fs gets damaged for some reason or another, it is good, when the 
damage does not spread to your private data. The OS can be easily 
reinstalled. Several years of intensively collected nude pictures not.

A different partition for /home prevents some bad stuff from happening. It is 
a good thing!

For example my /var damage some weeks ago. It was contained to /var 
because /var was the partition the system was writing to, when the sata cable 
came loose. If everything would have been on one partition I might have lost 
my ~/Mail dir - with hundred thousand+ mails ... or my ~/text dir, which 
contains everything I write... 

>
> Perhaps that person was wrong... at least in my case, I clearly had a
> logical failure in the partition, with no physical failure in the disk, so
> if I had multiple partitions, maybe only one would have problems.

it is very probably only one would have had the problems.

>
> > Lesson 2: backups.
>
> Hehe. Yes I know. Fortunately it seems I was very lucky this time...

a little hint: ebay. Used dlt 35/70 drive. Pretty cheap and robust. use tar 
for backup, but use mbuffer to puffer or you will never backup/restore with 
full speed and the drive suffers.

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