labels like those in gmail
I use reiserfs but not familiar with the technical details. I'm wondering if it's possible to use meta tags in reiser4 fs to add labels to files. for example, I could have labels: photo, work, personal, vacation then a jpg file from work would have the labels photo and work. it allows searching my files easier. no need to create different directories for different subjects. All files are in the same directory and I could browse them using labels. another advantage is that many files may fall in two categories and rather than have multiple copies one in each category, I just apply multiple labels for a single copy of the file. if the answer is yes, does it require a core change to reiserfs or can be a plugin. another question, is the meta tag structure is xml? should it be? XML documents waste a lot of space and require more cpu cycles to process, but they are extensible and I hope reiser4 tags are also extensible Thanks, -Bedros btw, awesome work hans and all reiserfs developers.
Re: Protect/Backup Encrypted FS
I have a very similar problem; Assume that I created an ecnrypted partition using reiserfs. I know I can access the partition after a regular boot, but what if I used LiveCD? What data (and where it's stored) I need in order to access that partition using knoppix LiveCD for example. I wanted to have an encrypted partition, but my problem is I don't know how to findthe encryption keys and save them in a safe place. Just in case the system die and I don't have a recent backup. -Bedros On Apr 8, 2005 7:27 PM, Chester R. Hosey <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-Hash: SHA1What configuration? I'm not really sure what you're asking, which meansthat it's difficult to formulate an answer. People on this list aregenerally very willing to help, but their ability to help is limited byhow much information you give about what you're looking to do.As far as backing up a partition and restoring that backup, use tar. GNUtar (which is almost certainly the default on GNU/Linux systems) isquite full-featured and should be able to serve your needs.If you're asking how to inform a GNU/Linux system about partitions youwant to have mounted, you're probably looking for the /etc/fstab file.Try "man fstab" to see the manual page, and examine your current/etc/fstab to see what partitions the operating system knows about (withrespect to filesystem type, where to mount by default, whether to mounton boot, etc.).If this hasn't provided you with the information you need to find ananswer, perhaps you could try a bit more specifically. Describe thesituation in which you find yourself, and what you hope to be able todo. Bonus points are awarded if it's a question specific to ReiserFS, asthis is the topic of this list.Shannon wrote:| I haven't received a reply to this, so I'm going to be more specific:|| When you create an encrypted partition, where is this configurationstored?|| On Tue, 5 Apr 2005 02:48 pm, Shannon wrote:||>/ 10GBReiser|>/home 40GBReiser encrypted FS|>/swap 300mb|>|>|>As per the harddrive configuration, if my / partition becomes corrupted or|>if I choose to install a fresh copy of SuSe9.2 Pro over / and remount|>/home, what do need to backup or how do I backup the files needed to|>restore the encrypted partition /home-BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-Version: GnuPG v1.4.0 (MingW32)Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://enigmail.mozdev.orgiD8DBQFCVz2erDBoMHxfhXwRAmJrAJ98d6Ia3pcrMwNn4He610fBWtX/EQCgvFCvmbT2w8dPxAi5otfpTWzbBOM==Xq6Q-END PGP SIGNATURE-
Re: ReiserFS IFSD for Windows
I'll be interested in testing your code. I have an old 20GB HD which I can play with. Currently, I have a USB drive formatted in NTFS, because, I want it to be accessible by friend's XP machine in case of emergencies. and I would convert it to ReiserFS once your code is stable enough. having a read only mode is fine with me; write mode would be a nice option, but it's not important in my case. My impression is Hans doesn't like the Idea, but a stripped down version of ReiserFS driver for windows could be a good thing, and encourages more people to use ReiserFS. -Bedros On 5/12/05, Mark Piper <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: This summer, I will be starting a 3.5-month project to create anInstallable File System Driver (IFSD) to read ReiserFS under MicrosoftWindows, similar to ext2fsd. (The project is a practicum to completemy degree in software engineering from Carnegie Mellon.) I have three questions:* Is anyone out there interested in using the tool as it is developed?* Is anyone out there interested in mentoring the development of thetool? (This basically consists of answering specific technical questions when they arise.)* Other than compliance to the GPL, are there any other liscensingfactors I should be aware of?For anyone interested, my initial plan is to port the read-only ReiserFS 3 code from the GRUB bootloader, and turn it into an IFSD using the sametechniques as in ext2fsd -- although I'd love to hear other ideas, andopinions of whether the project might be feasible with ReiserFS 4. Thanks, Mark Piper
trusted processes
last year, I asked a question on this list whether we could have file permissions for programs (or processes) in addition to users and groups. we need this feature to reject malicious code from accessing system files. Microsoft has a tech paper about having what they call trusted processes. you can find it here http://msdn.microsoft.com/mobility/default.aspx?pull=/library/en-us/dnppcgen/html/wmsecurity.asp I don't know for how long they've been working on this, but I bet I came up with this concept first. what do you think guys of implementing such feature; should it be in the file system, kernel, or both. How hard is it to implement, besides the complexity of authentication management. -B
Re: reiser4 plugins
First of all, I'm HW engineer, and don't know much about implementation
details of FS. I know some coding, I've coded for different levels from
linux device drivers to GUI's, but I know a lot about integration
between levels of hierarchy.
I generally agree with the idea that high level functionality such as
compressing, encrypting, ...etc should not be implemented in the FS.
But, the term "high-level" is a relative term and three years down the
road, what we consider high-level now becomes low-level.
my suggestion is to keep everything as is. if Hans and the reiser4 guys
want to implement high level stuff as plug-ins that's fine. If the VFS
guys want to implement the same functionality in VFS on top of the
system FS; they can do it too.
BUT PLEASE MAKE THE API COMPATIBLE
programmers on both sides should discuss the features and make sure the API is compatible.
in such a scenario, if I want to compress a directory called
/mystuff/data on a reiser4 FS, I could call the VFS API to do so; The
VFS finds that the system is reiser4 and compression is supported, so
it passes the call to reiser4. On another hand, if the system is ext3
and it doens't support compression, VFS performs the task and passes
the file to ext3.
My point is that the effect of gravity is upon us, high level
stuff will become low-level in a short time. Moreover, at the low level
in FS and especially when done by FS guys, functions such as
compression can be done more efficiently than in VFS space.
my worries are that the waste of effort by implementing the same
functionality in two levels in the hierarchy, and incompatible API can
cause serious headache.
just my two cents.
-Bedros
On 6/21/05, David Masover <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-Hash: SHA1Jeff Garzik wrote:> Hans Reiser wrote:>>> Christoph, Reiser4 users love the plugin concept, and all audiences which have
>> listened to a presentation on plugins have been quite positive about>> it. Many users think it is the best thing about reiser4. Can you>> articulate why you are opposed to plugins in more detail? Perhaps you
>> are simply not as familiar with it as the audiences I have presented>> to. Perhaps persons on our mailing list can comment. In particular, what is wrong with having a plugin id associated with
>> every file, storing the pluginid on disk in permanent storage in the>> stat data, and having that plugin id define the set of methods that>> implement the vfs operations associated with a particular file, rather
>> than defining VFS methods only at filesystem granularity?>>> You're basically implementing another VFS layer inside of reiser4, which> is a big layering violation.There's been sloppy code in the kernel before. I remember one bit in
particular which was commented "Fuck me gently with a chainsaw." If Iremember correctly, this had all of the PCI ids and the names andmanufacturers of the corresponding devices -- in a data structure -- in
C source code. It was something like one massive array definition, ormaybe it was a structure. I don't remember exactly, but...The point is, this was in the kernel for quite awhile, and it was sougly that someone would rather be fucked with a chainsaw. If something
that bad can make it in the kernel and stay for awhile because itworked, and no one wanted to replace it -- nowdays, that database iskept in userland as some nice text format -- then I vote for puttingReiser4 in the kernel now, and ironing the sloppiness ("violation") out
later. It runs now.> This sort of feature should -not- be done at the low-level filesystem> level.I agree there, too. In fact, some people have suggested that all"legacy" (read: non-reiser) filesystems should be implemented as Reiser4
plugins, effectively killing VFS.*So, Reiser4 may eventually take over VFS and be the only Linuxfilesystem, but if so, it will have to do it much more slowly. Take thegood ideas -- things like plugins -- and make them at least look like
incremental updates to the current VFS, and make them available to allfilesystems.Eventually, this would result in a full merge of Reiser and Linux, suchthat the only thing left of "Reiser4" are a few plugins -- things like
storage plugins and maybe some more exotic things like fibration that Idon't really understand.> What happens if people decide plugins are a good idea, and they want> them in ext3? We need massive surgery to extract the guts from reiser4.
And here is the crucial point. Reiser4 is usable and useful NOW, notafter it has undergone massive surgery, and Namesys is bankrupt, andusers have given up and moved on to XFS. But the massive surgery should
happen eventually, partly to make all filesystems better (see below),and partly to make the transition easier and more palatable for thosewho don't work for Namesys.* Imagine ext3 as a storage-level plugin for reiser4. You get one
benefit immediately -- lazy allocation. Lazy allocation is nice bothfor fragmentation a
Re: reiser4 performance
how many people are on reiserfs-list? On 8/8/05, michael chang <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: On 8/8/05, michael chang <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:> On 8/8/05, David Masover <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:> > PFC wrote: > > >>> If only it had a resizer :(> > > I would definitely give $25 for the repacker, which is the> > > mandatory condition to get the resizer. How many people would give $25 > > > too ? why not do a little fundraising ?> > I would give $25 before it is done, only if it will be F/OSS. I would> > give $25 _after_ it's done to get my own personal, proprietary copy. > Assuming we went the Paypal route via Fundable.org and the money went> straight to a Namesys Paypal Merchant account; we'd need $ 92024.84> USD before the 2.2% and $.30 USD deduction. Assuming that every > person donated $25 (which will obviously not be the case; some will> donate more; some might less if we have to scrounge around, which we> might) ; we'd need about 3681 people to donate.> > Assuming we went third-party before Namesys, and that money went from> a third-party's Paypal account to Namesys, we'd need to charge the> fees twice... a minimum of $94095.23 USD would be required; requiring > a minimum of 3764 donators at $25 apiece.Hmm... noticed a small flaw in the calculations -- the calculationsare based on the "merchant" rate; which require a constant flow oftransactions -- since this is more likely to be a one-time thing, this would probably be charged at the "standard rate"; at 2.9%. That meansthe third-party would require $95456.79 USD; or 3819 donators at $25apiece. Straight to Namesys would require $92688.26 USD; or 3708 donators at $25 apiece. Geez, Paypal is full of nothing but thievesand crooks. *evil glare*--~Mike - Just my two cents - No man is an island, and no man is unable.
changing label of disk
here's a noob question. I have a usb HD using reiserfs 3.6 I want to change the label of the disk, so when it's automounted, the mounting point has some meaning such as "backup" instead of "usbdisk" fstab-sync seems to use the label of the disk to create a mounting point. mkfs.reiserfs -l label will overwrite the old data; is there a way to edit the old lable w/o reformating the disk, other than hexedit the disk? Thanks, -B
reiserfs using too much space on my HD
Hi, I've been using reiserfs for several years now and it's been choice number one for me; I'll probably switch to reiser4 once it's in the main kernel. on my home file server machine, one hard drive (120GB) reports 80 GB used, but I have no idea how and where it's used. df -h reports 80GB used but when I run kdirstat, I get about 10GB used for directory /. I ran fsck.reiserfs from liveCD and it reported no errors. is there any better way to tell what's eating up my hard drive? Regards, -Bedros
Re: reiserfs using too much space on my HD
"du -shx" reports 9.5GB I'm running latest from gentoo, so I assume it's 3.6.19. I ran fsck.reiserfs from gentoo liveCD 2005.1 and at the end I got zero errors. The problem could be fixed, I could tar the whole root directory to an external drive, format the partition and then tar it back. but I'm not sure what's going on? I'll post all logs on this list tomorrow. -Bedros On 10/27/05, Vladimir V. Saveliev <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: HelloBedros Hanounik wrote:> Hi,>> I've been using reiserfs for several years now and it's been choice> number one for me; I'll probably switch to reiser4 once it's in the main> kernel. >> on my home file server machine, one hard drive (120GB) reports 80 GB> used, but I have no idea how and where it's used.>> df -h reports 80GB used>what does du -s / report? > but when I run kdirstat, I get about 10GB used for directory /.>> I ran fsck.reiserfs from liveCD and it reported no errors.>is it reiserfsck 3.6.19?Please send output of reiserfsck 3.6.19.> is there any better way to tell what's eating up my hard drive?>> Regards,>> -Bedros>>
Re: reiserfs using too much space on my HD
Vlad, fsck.reiserfs version is 3.6.19; when I run it, it reports no corruption errors found at the end; or something like that. I'll tar the whole partition to an external drive, then format it and untar it again. Anyone knows if "tar cvjpf file /" is suffecient to keep all permisions etc. (including for system directories such as /proc /dev) and restoring exactly as it was before format? Thanks, -B On 10/27/05, Bedros Hanounik <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: "du -shx" reports 9.5GB I'm running latest from gentoo, so I assume it's 3.6.19. I ran fsck.reiserfs from gentoo liveCD 2005.1 and at the end I got zero errors. The problem could be fixed, I could tar the whole root directory to an external drive, format the partition and then tar it back. but I'm not sure what's going on? I'll post all logs on this list tomorrow. -Bedros On 10/27/05, Vladimir V. Saveliev <[EMAIL PROTECTED] > wrote: HelloBedros Hanounik wrote:> Hi,>> I've been using reiserfs for several years now and it's been choice> number one for me; I'll probably switch to reiser4 once it's in the main> kernel. >> on my home file server machine, one hard drive (120GB) reports 80 GB> used, but I have no idea how and where it's used.>> df -h reports 80GB used>what does du -s / report? > but when I run kdirstat, I get about 10GB used for directory /.>> I ran fsck.reiserfs from liveCD and it reported no errors.>is it reiserfsck 3.6.19?Please send output of reiserfsck 3.6.19.> is there any better way to tell what's eating up my hard drive?>> Regards,>> -Bedros>>
some details about winfs
an interview with MS transactional file system guy (winfs)here http://channel9.msdn.com/Showpost.aspx?postid=142120it's in wmv format; you need mplayer with win32codecs library. It's 140MB file; and very informative, but made me think less of winFS. -B
Re: some details about winfs
I don't think there's a transcript; but I'll try to convert it to xvid. mean while, try to get xvid codec installed on your system.-BOn 12/5/05, Peter van Hardenberg <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:Is there a transcript anywhere? -pvhOn December 4, 2005 10:44 pm, Bedros Hanounik wrote:> an interview with MS transactional file system guy (winfs)>> here>> http://channel9.msdn.com/Showpost.aspx?postid=142120>> it's in wmv format; you need mplayer with win32codecs library. It's 140MB> file; and very informative, but made me think less of winFS.> > -B--Peter van Hardenberg ([EMAIL PROTECTED])Victoria, BC, Canada
Re: Reiserfsck can't fix FS
I had the exact same problem on a 300GB hard drive over USB with ReiserFSby running resiserfsck, the tools suggested running it again with --rebuild-tree option and it was a mistake. reiserfsck --rebuild-tree screwed things up big time; but I had a backup copy of my stuff, so I reformatted the HD. I would probably never use the option --rebuild-tree, only --fix-fixable. I'm not sure if the partition actually was corrupted. I was able to access it, but on start when mounting the partition it gave me error messages; something like "file system not clean" On 12/10/05, Thomas Raschbacher <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: Hi,Finally got my new HDD (300 GB UDMA133 :D no usb anymore ..)i backed up my data and ran reiserfsck on one of the other partitionswhich were supposedly damaged.it didn't work out (stopped at same point always) then i made a backup copy of my backup copy and ran reiserfsck on that andit worked just fine.-> it seems that my filesystems never had errors in the first place butrunning reiserfsck on my USB hdd caused the problems in the first place. fortunately i could recover all my digital camera photos (which i willdefinitely back up on DVD from now on!some mp3's lost the filenames but who really cares about that anyway.i suggest adding to the reiserfsck docs that running it on usb-hdds might cause problems due to usb hdd driver bugs or whatever .. or at least anote that if it fails on usb-hdd copy it to a non usb hdd and try again.Regards, Thomas RP.S.: I never enforced bandwidth allocation. but i still dont' know what the problem is with this stupid USB2 storage stuffs .. it worked fine withsome old kernel (either early 2.6 or still 2.4 ..) any ideas what cancause this kind of problems with usb hdds? or should i post to some kernel mailing list/newsgroup?---BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK-GCS/CC/E/M/MU/S d- s: a--- C(++) UL P+ L E W+++ N+++ o-- K w-- OM-- V- PS+ PE-- Y++ PGP+++ t+++ 5+ X- R tv b DI- D+ G++ e-->+ h-- !r z---END GEEK CODE BLOCK--On Thu, October 20, 2005 19:55, michael chang said:> On 10/19/05, Thomas Raschbacher <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:>> Actually I did send it SIGUSR1 signals to get the progress so it really >> seems to work fine.>> I intend to get another HDD (internal) and see if i can copy the FS and>> then fix it there.>> how would I best copy the filesystem? DD ?>> (The PRoblems I had before with this disc are USB-storage related where >> the disc does stop working if one reads/writes too much data at once on>> USB2)>> The USB2 data loss thing sounds like a bandwidth-allocation problem;> since it's not always advisible to enforce it by default (well, I > don't know about that, but I don't enforce it in any of my hand-built> kernels). What you are doing next sounds reasonable, please inform us> how well it goes.>> --> ~Mike> - Just my two cents > - No man is an island, and no man is unable.>
Re: Authoring a versioning plugin
I think versioning plugin is a great idea and I bet there're many people like me waiting for such a plugin. However, I have few questions;what happens when I delete a file? should I loose all history of the file with such action? if there's an undelete plugin, what kind of hooks needed so undelete recovers the full state of the file with history.another concern is backup; if I backup the file or the entire directory (or drive), is it transparent to the backup app, or something extra needed to be done to backup the history of the file? if you store all the history in a sub direcotry let's say .rev and make it generic (and hence visible) to everyone, the above problems will go away. for example filename.ext deltas could be stored in .rev/filename- rev-date-time.delta with base rev in .rev/filename-rev-date-time.extcorrect me if I'm missing something, because I don't know the plugin mechanism of reiser4.-BOn 1/12/06, Jonathan Briggs <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: On Wed, 2006-01-11 at 22:44 -0800, Hans Reiser wrote:> Hans Reiser wrote:> > I am skeptical that having it occur with every> >write is desirable actually.> >> >> Consider the case where you type cat file1 >> file2. This will produce > a version of file2 for every 4k that is in file1, because (well I didn't> look at the bash source, but I would guess) it appends in 4k incremental> writes rather than one big write. Versioning on file close makes more > sense[snip]Not that my opinion means anything. :-) But I agree with Hans that fileclose is the place to create the new version. The plugin should trackthe writes (and mmap flushes) between file open and close, then on file close it can process everything into a reverse binary diff to savepermanently.--Jonathan Briggs <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>eSoft, Inc.-BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.2 (GNU/Linux)iD8DBQBDxoTGG8fHaOLTWwgRAkE0AJ9qn75iDGZTgO+KpOEcVVqOuT8mgwCcDYyyBHWE+E4oBHkabjZZHNIoAqM==Vtbo-END PGP SIGNATURE-
Re: Authoring a versioning plugin
David,I appreciate your criticism, but we're not in a flame war. I never claimed to be an FS expert. Take it easy; you don't have to beat my suggestion to death. There's no perfect solution, and all feedbacks, no matter how idiotic or simple may seem, help making a better final solution. my suggestions were burst of the moment, I didn't give 'em much thoughts; however, all the problems you found could be fixed. Again, I'm not the FS expert here.-BOn 1/12/06, David Masover <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: Bedros Hanounik wrote:> I think versioning plugin is a great idea and I bet there're many people> like me waiting for such a plugin. However, I have few questions;>> what happens when I delete a file? should I loose all history of the > file with such action?Depends. Delete has always been a modification of the directory, notthe file. So, if you were versioning an entire directory tree(recursively, of course), then deleting a single file within that tree would be a modification to its parent directory. Until thechangelog/history/old versions of the parent directory all disappear,there will be a link to the file, meaning the file still behaves exactlyas it always did, it's just that instead of only being linked to in foo/barit's now infoo/.../version/1234/bar[...]> if you store all the history in a sub direcotry let's say .rev and make> it generic (and hence visible) to everyone, the above problems will go > away.Only now you have some new problems:What if someone wants to make a .rev for something else? '...' wascarefully selected, and is still debated. Now you're suggesting eachplugin be able to have its own file/directory in every normal directory? NO. Will not work.What might work is creating a '.metadata-archive' directory, which hashardlinks to everything tar is allowed to backup from '...' -- that way,we only need to come up with one more unique name than we already have. Technically, not even that -- we could hide a directory with any name welike inside '...', and let tar archive '...', but not, say, '.../notar',but that's a hassle for users. Anyone have a better name for '.metadata-archive', though?You also have another problem: You've just broken 'rm -r' and 'mv'across partitions/devices. Consider: Am I allowed to remove'.metadata-archive'? If yes, then what happens when I look for it again? Is it magically still there? And if no, how am I supposed toever be able to rmdir a directory that's technically not empty? Shouldthat just magically work?I suspect that we'd be fine if we just say that removing it should pretend to work (return an OK status), and rmdir should actually work,but it should always show up in the directory listing, because I can'tthink of why a program would step through the directory listing,unlinking each file, and then get another directory listing, to make sure they're all gone, before it tried 'rmdir'-ing the directory. Itmakes no sense -- you try to 'rmdir', and you complain to the user if"directory not empty" because someone stuck a new file in the dir while you were trying to delete it.> for example filename.ext deltas could be stored in .rev/filename-> rev-date-time.delta with base rev in .rev/filename-rev-date-time.extI don't like your semantics. I just don't. It makes sense to use file extensions for fibration, because you canguess that '.o' files are similar to each other. Same with '.c' files. But fibration is completely transparent, and just affects performance, so it's ok to guess there.When it comes to actually affecting semantics, file extensions havealways been irrelevant except to programs that care, and those programsonly care about their own extensions. For instance, say I havefoo.tar.bz2Obviously, this way looks bad:foo.tar-rev-date-time.deltafoo.tar-rev-date-time.bz2So do we do it this way?foo-rev-date-time.deltafoo-rev-date-time.tar.bz2 No, because then what if you have this?foo.01.12.2006.tar.bz2Obviously, this is wrong:foo-rev-date-time.deltafoo-rev-date-time.01.12.2006.tar.bz2And this is just as wrong as it was before: foo.01.12.2006.tar-rev-date-time.deltafoo.01.12.2006.tar-rev-date-time.bz2And for that matter, what if I have these?foo.tbz2foo.zipBoth become foo.delta.And just a minor thing, but you're also making the limit on filenames just that much more restrictive.Instead, I suggest we do it this way:foo/.../version/with symlinks to some handy versions offoo/.../version/foo/.../version/ This should also work if foo is a directory. So to actually publish agiven revision, you dotar -cjSf foo-1234.tar.bz2 foo/.../1234Now, what about forking? If we had good copy-on-write support, we could just do something likecp --cow foo/.../1234 foo-forkObviously, this would use the same underlying mechanism of copy-on-writethat is used for the versioning system, so there's no need for thesystem itself to know about forks. What about merges? I don't know, but my knowledge of existingversioning systems is pretty limited...
