vanilla-sources 2.4.20 & IDE problems

uxbod · Guru Joined: 30 Dec 2002 Posts: 474 Location: UK

Its seems that I have been biten by the IDE and EXT3 problems under kernel 2.4.20. I have received a lot of errors when transferring large data files. At first I thought my HD had gone, but after searching the net and reading the latest Gentoo Weekly Newsletter I believe it is a kernel issue. So with that in mind what kernel should I go for? or should I move away from Ext3 onto Reiserfs? Dont really want to kick off another stage1 build until I bottom this out.

thadk · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 21 Jun 2002 Posts: 123

I see, thanks for the quick response...hadn't even thought of that...now to roll back...

Rafixus · n00b Joined: 06 Jan 2003 Posts: 67

Good thing that my 2.4.20 kernel compile died! :lol:

hyperion · n00b Joined: 26 Dec 2002 Posts: 31

I'm no fs whiz but I've used vanilla 2.4.20 and reiserfs now for a month and couldn't be happier. In fact I'd say this is the stablest Linux system I've had yet.

It recently served as a dedicated Q3/UT03 and samba file server at a lan party (oddly enough my 2 Tux boxes were, for a while, the only machines accessible by everyone in Network Neighborhood). I even emerged gftp and made a few iso images while hosting the game and we experienced zero server lag.

It has survived several graceless powerdowns and there's been zero disk problems.

PT_LAmb · Posted: Wed Jan 22, 2003 3:20 pm Post subject:

I also agree that ReiserFS is pretty much stable.

I have 3 computers running under ReiserFS:

- My Personal Computer;
- A Samba server on a 15 M$ Windoze XP Workstations network;
- and a multi-purpose UNIX Server (for programming and fooling around), on my University student's network.

And to the moment, haven't got a single error. For me it's as stable as ext2.

Just my 2 cents...
Ricardo Cordeiro

_________________
SETI@Home - http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/

gzaector · Posted: Wed Jan 22, 2003 3:52 pm Post subject:

i have been using 2.4.20 and reiserfs for like 2 months now and have no problems with it at all

uxbod · Guru Joined: 30 Dec 2002 Posts: 474 Location: UK

When using ReiserFS do you need to do anything extra at install time ?

gzaector · Posted: Wed Jan 22, 2003 5:01 pm Post subject:

Kumba · Posted: Wed Jan 22, 2003 7:56 pm Post subject:

I haven't heard of these IDE Problems until recently, but I'm using 2.4.20 && XFS on my x86 machine, and 2.4.20/ext3 on my sun blade 100 system. On the Blade 100, I haven't seen any peculiarities yet regarding IDE and ext3, so I wonder if this is 2.4.20 + ext3 +x86 issue only. Ideas anyone?

--Kumba
_________________
"The past tempts us, the present confuses us, the future frightens us. And our lives slip away, moment by moment, lost in that vast, terrible in-between."
--Emperor Turhan, Centauri Republic

uxbod · Guru Joined: 30 Dec 2002 Posts: 474 Location: UK

After 12 hours system is fully operational again

This time I am running ReiserFS and no IDE problems yee-haaaaa

Performance is definately better aswell. My personal opinion is that they really messed up something with EXT3 in 2.4.20.

sulu · Posted: Fri Jan 24, 2003 11:17 am Post subject:

IDE is an issue with vanilla 2.4.20.

You could try the new gentoo-sources 2.4.20-r1 but you are happy with ReiserFS anyway.

I just installed the new gentoo-kernel and it looks promising so far but i haven't tested everything yet.

Sulu

uxbod · Guru Joined: 30 Dec 2002 Posts: 474 Location: UK

Cannot be long before 2.5.X comes out ?

sulu · Posted: Fri Jan 24, 2003 2:16 pm Post subject:

You mean 2.6.XX.

It might take some time for the release of kernel 2.6.
But the kernel 2.5 seems to perform quite well, although there seem to be some prolems with the nvidia drivers.

n8wood · Posted: Sat Jan 25, 2003 4:17 am Post subject:

I have also experienced ext3 corruption.

However, I am using gentoo-sources 2.4.19-r10. I will compile another kernel to test further.

474 · l33t Joined: 19 Apr 2002 Posts: 714

Yup, people always hype up that ext3 is supposedly stable just because it "inherits" from ext2 which is a dangerous notion, IMHO. I posted a warning about ext3 and 2.4.20 here: https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=28901 and asked the Gentoo security dude to mention it but it didn't happen. If you are going to use ext3 and 2.4.20 (which obviously I wouldn't recommend) then either use 2.4.21-pre or use all of Andrew Morton's patches for ext3 (there are several that he's written which are linked to in that post). In fact, he's written patches for both 2.4.20 and 2.4.21-pre!

I think ReiserFS is really stable and that, along with its very agreeable performance characteristics, makes it the best all round filesystem right now.

I want to find out more about these IDE problems. Linux deserves a good IDE layer, and it might just happen soon because Andre Hedrick has apparently learnt not to be such a difficult developer to work with and has taken over development on IDE again (according to Kernel Traffic) which is a good thing!

c_kuzmanic · Posted: Sat Jan 25, 2003 9:18 pm Post subject: