Re: What boot loader supports reiserfs root partitions?

[Erik Andersen]

On Sun Apr 09, 2000 at 04:49:38PM +0200, Felix von Leitner wrote:
> I am currently investigating using reiserfs as root partition file
> system, but to my dismay the different boot loaders do not support
> reiserfs.  lilo says
> 
>   Hole found in map file (alloc_page)
> 
> Has anyone ever used reiserfs as root partition?
> I have looked into syslinux, grub and nuni and wonder if I am forced to
> add a FAT partition with syslinux now.

lilo works, but you must mount the reiserfs partition with the "notail" option.
reiserfs tries to be efficient with disk space by taking the excess portions of
files that do not fill up a whole block and it takes these "tails" and packs
them together.  This leaves holes in the files which prevents lilo from finding
a continuous kernel image.

As root something like:
    mount /dev/root / -o remount,rw,notail
    cp -a /boot /boot1
    rm -rf /boot
    mv /boot1 /boot
    lilo

The process of copying the files after the remount will cause the
files to all be rewritten without any tails,

 -Erik

--
Erik B. Andersen   Web:    http://www.xmission.com/~andersen/ 
                   email:  [e-mail]
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