question about 2.4.18 and ext3

question about 2.4.18 and ext3

[Colin Leroy]

Hello all,

I really hope I'm not asking a FAQ, i looked in the archives since 15 Feb
and didn't see anything about this.

I upgraded from 2.2.20 to 2.4.18 on my powerbook two weeks ago, and
compiled ext3 in the kernel in order to quietly crash :)

However, I had about a dozen strange crashes, sometimes when the computer
woke up from sleep, sometimes when launching a program : every visible
soft died, then X, then blackscreen, and the computer didn't even answer
pings. So I reset the computer and here, each time, yaboot (ppc equivalent
of lilo) told me that "cannot load image". Booting and fscking from a
rescue CD showed that superblock was corrupt. 

Of course, nothing in any log :-/
I went back to ext2 three days ago and I do not suffer any crashes since.

Is there a problem with ext3 on 2.3.18 ?
Thanks,
-- 
Colin

Re: question about 2.4.18 and ext3

[Mike Fedyk]

On Mon, Mar 18, 2002 at 06:01:58PM +0100, Colin Leroy wrote:
> Is there a problem with ext3 on 2.3.18 ?

You should try the ppc kernel available from http://www.penguinppc.org/

Has ppc been merged enough to use the stock kernel now?

Re: question about 2.4.18 and ext3

[Colin Leroy]

On Mon, 18 Mar 2002 09:27:56 -0800 Mike Fedyk <mfedyk@matchmail.com>
wrote:

> > Is there a problem with ext3 on 2.3.18 ?

s/3/4/, sorry.

> You should try the ppc kernel available from http://www.penguinppc.org/
> 
> Has ppc been merged enough to use the stock kernel now?

I saw here that it was widely merged :

http://www.imaclinux.net/php/imaclinux.php3?subject=kernel

"Finish of the PPC merge into kernel 2.4.18 
 Posted by Olivier Reisch on Friday January 11th, 2002 12:11:39 PM
 Linux 2.4.18-pre3 is available and with it, the larger PPC merge with 
2.4.18 has been accomplished. The official kernel.org sources are now 
almost up to par with the official stable PPC tree. Thus, it should 
compile fine on most PPC machines and include the latest features."

So I used a stock kernel. In fact it runs very well apart from these ext3
problems.-- 
Colin
panic("Lucy in the sky....");
    2.2.19 linux/arch/sparc64/kernel/starfire.c

Re: question about 2.4.18 and ext3

[Andrew Morton]

Colin Leroy wrote:
> 
> Hello all,
> 
> I really hope I'm not asking a FAQ, i looked in the archives since 15 Feb
> and didn't see anything about this.
> 
> I upgraded from 2.2.20 to 2.4.18 on my powerbook two weeks ago, and
> compiled ext3 in the kernel in order to quietly crash :)
> 
> However, I had about a dozen strange crashes, sometimes when the computer
> woke up from sleep, sometimes when launching a program : every visible
> soft died, then X, then blackscreen, and the computer didn't even answer
> pings. So I reset the computer and here, each time, yaboot (ppc equivalent
> of lilo) told me that "cannot load image". Booting and fscking from a
> rescue CD showed that superblock was corrupt.

It may be a yaboot/ext3 incompatibility.  Your version of yaboot
may not know how to mount a needs-recovery ext3 filesystem.
There are some words on this at
http://www.zip.com.au/~akpm/linux/ext3/ext3-usage.html

I am told that yaboot 1.3.5 and later will do the right thing.
What version are you using?

-

Re: question about 2.4.18 and ext3

[Håkon Alstadheim]

Andrew Morton <akpm@zip.com.au> writes:

> Colin Leroy wrote:
> > 
> > Hello all,
> > 
> > I really hope I'm not asking a FAQ, i looked in the archives since 15 Feb
> > and didn't see anything about this.
> > 
> > I upgraded from 2.2.20 to 2.4.18 on my powerbook two weeks ago, and
> > compiled ext3 in the kernel in order to quietly crash :)
> > 
> > However, I had about a dozen strange crashes, sometimes when the computer
> > woke up from sleep, sometimes when launching a program : every visible
> > soft died, then X, then blackscreen, and the computer didn't even answer
> > pings. So I reset the computer and here, each time, yaboot (ppc equivalent
> > of lilo) told me that "cannot load image". Booting and fscking from a
> > rescue CD showed that superblock was corrupt.
> 
> It may be a yaboot/ext3 incompatibility.  Your version of yaboot
> may not know how to mount a needs-recovery ext3 filesystem.
> There are some words on this at
> http://www.zip.com.au/~akpm/linux/ext3/ext3-usage.html
> 
> I am told that yaboot 1.3.5 and later will do the right thing.
> What version are you using?

One way to work around this is to keep your kernels in /boot and have
/boot be a separate ext2 filesystem that you normally mount ro. That
way it will not need to be recovered after a crash. During install of
a new kernel you will of course need to do "/bin/mount -o remount,rw
/boot" and then afterwards "/bin/mount -o remount,ro /boot" .

Your /etc/fstab will then look something like:

[...]
/dev/hde3 /      ext3 # your usual parameters here
/dev/hda6 /boot  ext2 ro,exec   1   2
[...]

Remember to make sure you know which devices are / and /boot/
respectively, and also which device holds the bootsector. Make sure
you know which one to give to your bootloader where.

I run grub-install like this:
/usr/local/sbin/grub-install /dev/hda --root-directory=/boot

Which tells grub to install its loader into the MBR of my first hd,
and then look for the kernel and the second stage boot-loader on
/dev/hda6 (which is mounted as /boot/). I seem to remember that grub
copied the files it needed into /boot/boot/grub/ itself. It looks
funny, but I left it at that.

-- 
Håkon Alstadheim, hjemmepappa.

Re: question about 2.4.18 and ext3

[Mike Fedyk]

On Tue, Mar 19, 2002 at 08:57:51AM +0100, H?kon Alstadheim wrote:
> Andrew Morton <akpm@zip.com.au> writes:
> 
> > Colin Leroy wrote:
> > > 
> > > Hello all,
> > > 
> > > I really hope I'm not asking a FAQ, i looked in the archives since 15 Feb
> > > and didn't see anything about this.
> > > 
> > > I upgraded from 2.2.20 to 2.4.18 on my powerbook two weeks ago, and
> > > compiled ext3 in the kernel in order to quietly crash :)
> > > 
> > > However, I had about a dozen strange crashes, sometimes when the computer
> > > woke up from sleep, sometimes when launching a program : every visible
> > > soft died, then X, then blackscreen, and the computer didn't even answer
> > > pings. So I reset the computer and here, each time, yaboot (ppc equivalent
> > > of lilo) told me that "cannot load image". Booting and fscking from a
> > > rescue CD showed that superblock was corrupt.
> > 
> > It may be a yaboot/ext3 incompatibility.  Your version of yaboot
> > may not know how to mount a needs-recovery ext3 filesystem.
> > There are some words on this at
> > http://www.zip.com.au/~akpm/linux/ext3/ext3-usage.html
> > 
> > I am told that yaboot 1.3.5 and later will do the right thing.
> > What version are you using?
> 
> One way to work around this is to keep your kernels in /boot and have
> /boot be a separate ext2 filesystem that you normally mount ro. That
> way it will not need to be recovered after a crash. During install of
> a new kernel you will of course need to do "/bin/mount -o remount,rw
> /boot" and then afterwards "/bin/mount -o remount,ro /boot" .
> 
> Your /etc/fstab will then look something like:
> 
> [...]
> /dev/hde3 /      ext3 # your usual parameters here
> /dev/hda6 /boot  ext2 ro,exec   1   2
> [...]
> 
> Remember to make sure you know which devices are / and /boot/
> respectively, and also which device holds the bootsector. Make sure
> you know which one to give to your bootloader where.
> 
> I run grub-install like this:
> /usr/local/sbin/grub-install /dev/hda --root-directory=/boot

Grub won't work on ppc IIRC, but it does work similarly by reading the
filesystem.