Thanks! This has cured my curiosity (for now...) On Mon, Sep 1, 2008 at 5:23 PM, Theodore Tso <tytso@xxxxxxx> wrote: > On Mon, Sep 01, 2008 at 05:16:01PM -0400, Mag Gam wrote: >> > If the filesystem is sufficiently damaged such that portions of the >> > b-tree can't be found, then yes. Otherwise, the data would be totally >> > lost. As you can imagine, scaning every single block on the disk to >> > see if it looks like filesystem metadata is quite slow, so naturally >> > the reiserfs's fsck will avoid doing it if at all possible. But if >> > the root or top-level nodes of the B-tree is damaged, it doesn't have >> > much choice. >> > >> >> But, if thats the last and worst case scenario why don't they do the >> full scan? Sure its going to take a long time if its a big filesystem >> (there should be no changes since it would be unmounted), but its >> better than not having any data at all... > > As I said, in the worst case, it will do a full scan. But (a) it > takes a long time, and (b) if the filesystem has any files that > contain images of reiserfs filesystem, it will be totally scrambled. > So it makes sense that the reiserfs fsck would try to avoid this if it > can (i.e., if the b-tree is only mildly corrupted). > > With that said, this is really going out of scope of this mailing > list. And I am not an expert on reiserfs's filesystem checker, > although I have had people confirm to me that indeed, you can lose > really big if your reiserfs filesystem contains files that have are > images of other reiserfs filesystems for things like Virtualization. > This problem is apparently solved in reiser4, it is NOT solved in > reiserfs (i.e., version 3). As far as I am concerned, that's ample > reason not to use reiserfs, but obviously I'm basied. :-) > > - Ted > > > _______________________________________________ Ext3-users mailing list Ext3-users@xxxxxxxxxx https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/ext3-users
