[plug] setting up to use reiserfs

[Harry McNally]

At 06:36  16/01/02 , you wrote:
>On Wed, 2002-01-16 at 14:33, Harry McNally wrote:
> > Hello
> >
> > I've merrily setup my new system with partitions /, /boot, /tmp. /var,
> > /usr, /usr/local, and /home.
> > Then I loaded Lots Of Useful Stuff.
> >
> > This was the wrong approach because I wanted to use reiserfs. I've copied
> > most of the partition contents to / through a /tmpsomething directory and
> > umounted the partitions; all in runlevel 1.

<snip>


>You can make everything reiserfs as long as you have it either compiled
>into your kernel or in an initrd. Obviously your kernel needs to be able
>to mount the partition with kernel modules on it before it can load
>them.
>
>I'd check that the lilo you have can manage to read a kernel off a
>reiserfs partition.
>
>How are you going to go about converting from ext[23] -> reiserfs? AFAIK
>you'll have to copy everything off and reinitialise the partitions.

Yes. I'm part way down that path now. When I said Lots Of Useful Stuff it 
can all fit on the 200MB / partition except /usr (which now also contains 
/usr/local)

But moving it was easy. Using /var as a for instance ..

/# telinit 1
   ... blah blah blah ...
/# mkdir /tmpvar
/# cd /tmpvar
/tmpvar# cp -R -p /var/* .    <- p is preserve attributes switch !!
/tmpvar# umount /var
/tmpvar# cd /var              <- which is now the var on the / partition
/var# cp -R -p /tmpvar/* .
/var# ls -la
   ... files and dirs ...
/var# rm -rf /tmpvar          <- typed carefully

Worked for me. Not unless someone uses the technical terms 'Arrrgh No!' on 
the list because this is the wrong approach.

I'm not certain whether the cp switch -d should be used (preserve links) 
... have I missed this and badly messed with some useful symbolic links ? I 
might wait for a response here because I haven't re-initialised the 
partitions yet so I can still have another go ...

Thanks too Craig for the "notails" option. I may or may not get /boot and / 
across to reiserfs. Got to shuffle before I can tap dance.

cu
Harry