I have been using reiser4 for several months now through several upgrades of the 2.6 kernel. After learning how to patch the kernel source with the proper mm patch I've had no problems selecting the reiser4 option in menuconfig until now.

I am able to patch the 2.6.12 source with the 2.6.11.3 mm patch and the reiser4 option appears in the menuconfig. When I compile I get a reiser4 error of sorts during the make portion of the compile, so it's a no go.

So, I patch the 2.6.12 source again, this time with the 2.6.12-mm1 patch without any problems. It makes the /usr/src/linux-2.6.12/fs/reiser4 directory (although it seems a little sparser than the same directory was after 2.6.11.xx was after being patching with the 2.6.11.3 mm patch). When I do make menuconfig I can't get reiser4 as an option. Predictably, the make portion of the compile goes smoothly, without errors, but no reiser4 support is compiled into the kernel.

I haven't been able to find a newer patch for the Reiser4 from namesys for the 2.6.12 kernel.

Anyone having any luck patching 2.6.12 for reiser4? Or what silly mistake am I making, since I thought I had this figured out by now!!

Thanks,
Gary

Note: I have been carrying over my .config file through several upgrades of the 2.6 kernel to speed things up. I tried the 2.6.12 menuconfig after patching without it to start fresh and no reiser4 option is available still. I think the 2.6.12-mm1 patch is deficient, since the reiser4 directory is substantially smaller.

Found this link to a modified 2.6.12-mm1 patch that did the job.

Seems a new Reiser4 dependency was added as explained in this link: http://wojia.be/blog/

After patching you must enable this crytographic option before the reiser4 fs is visible in the config menu.

Gary

The comment that Andrew Morton thinks that Reiser4FS may get merged into the 2.6.13 kernel is interesting.
P.K. has encouraged the use of Reiser3FS with the default 2.4.x kernel in the more recent Slackware releases and many people have all Reiser file systems including /boot. He does not normally patch kernel source, so it is hard to see how Slackware can easily move to 2.6 kernel without it.

Was curious to see if an unmodified 2.6.12-mm1 patch would work as long as the cryptographic options with deflate compression algorithm was selected.

Tried it and voila, reiser4 support was visible in the .config file. In fact, the /usr/src/linux-2.6.12/fs/reiser4 directory has more plugins this way, just like 2.6.11.xx had with the 2.6.11.3-mm patch, so I switched to this 2.6.12-mm1 kernel.

Hopefully all this mm patching will be a thing of the past with 2.6.13.

Would love it if Patrick would put reiser4 as a fs option in during an install like they did with Minislack. It would save you from having to compile libaal and reiser4progs, copying data to and from, reformatting ,etc.

Just glad I found a solution for now.

Take care,
Gary

yesterday a new patch was released from namesys, get it at:
ftp://ftp.namesys.com/pub/reiser4-for-2.6/2.6.12/

I am reluctant to try the 2.6 krnel unless it has built in ReiserFS, as I usually partition with just / and /home so /boot is just part of the / reiser format partition.

DX2,

Thanks for the link. Downloaded the patch and am now running on an R4 patched 2.6.12.3 kernel now.

Noticed that my kde and k3b problems that were present in 2.6.12-2.6.12.2 are gone now as well, so all is good.

Went ahead and updated to the 2.6.12.2 kernel headers while I was at it.

Thanks again for everyone's advice.

Gary

*Beware* of Reiser4 with mm or cko patchsets. I have not experienced this myself but my friend has been using reiser4 for many months now and as of the 2.6.12.2 release with cko or mm patchsets his reiser4 filesystems all get destroyed. He is still able to recover them but he can never get into a working system. I don't know how prevalent this is and if it is a known bug but its just a warning.

Namaseit,

It's funny that you mention that. I got a little sloppy during my kernel upgrade and had actually deleted my previous kernel (2.6.11.12) when I was upgrading lilo, before actually booting into the new R4 patched 2.6.12.3 kernel. Mounted a usb pendrive after this and got some weird errors.

When I tried to reboot, couldn't do it. Had to boot into my Arch Linux partition, which is also reiser4 and to a fsck.reiser4 which showed corruption on my Slackware partition. Had to rebuild-fs which actually found all the errors and worked, which somewhat impressed me, but I agree that Reiser4 is not yet as robust and stable as Reiser3.6.

But since I use linux for learning and playing, and not in a server status, it is just an annoyance at this time.

Take care,
Gary

Yup. Thats exactly what he said. He said that it will seem fine until you reboot and everything is toast. Recoverable, but toast. I wouldn't use the current kernel if this is the case.

Namaseit,

I think I'm going back to 2.6.11.12 with Reiser4. Noticed that the corruption problems with Reiser4 started with 2.6.12.3 kernel usage.

Presently am booted into Kanotix live cd so that I can access the internet, while I'm emerging kde (9 hour process!) on my Gentoo partition.

Tried to mount my Slackware reiser 4 partition but couldn't do it. Ran fsck.reiser4 from Kanotix (it uses a R4-patched 2.6.11.11 kernel) and it showed 1 fatal corruption, which I am rebuilding right now. The wierd thing was I could actually boot into Slackware and fsck.reiser4 which runs on boot showed nothing.

On a related question, does the fstab filesystem check digit need to be set to 1 for the / partition as I have it set to 0. I thought I read somewhere that the / partition is always checked, regardless whether it is set to 0 or 1, and that this only applies to the order for non-root systems?!

Thanks,
Gary

I know the reiserfs tools replay the journal at every boot. I guess that's the same thing.

I'm sure you've seen it. It usually has nothing to output. But sometimes on those hard reboots out of anger or kernel panic, you'll see little laundry list of items when it replays the journal.

Also the corruption happens on every reboot. You don't just reboot the first time and it's screwed, fix it, then you can use it regularly. It will do this *every* time you reboot. So you will be fixing your filesystem everytime you reboot. Not much fun.

Also, I never remove kernels. Especially ones that I didn't have problems with. I know you've probably already realized this but I just wanna say for anyone else.