[Re: drives]

[Matt Graham]

"Marcel Kunath" <kunathma@pilot.msu.edu> wrote:

[trying to mkreiserfs on an unpartitioned /dev/hdb]
> Well this works for ext2 but I can't do it with reiserfs. mkreiserfs 
> still errors on the device.

Which version of mkreiserfs are you using?  At which point does it fail? 
mkreiserfs has a fair number of printf() calls in it, which could help. 
It may not handle an entire disk correctly, or you may need to pass it the
(usually optional) block-count parameter (blocks = disk's capacity in K /
4), or you may have found a bug in mkreiserfs.

As I see it, you have 2 options:  

A) Make one big partition covering the entire disk, mkreiserfs the
partition and have things working quickly.  Trouble is, you'll be ignorant
of what's really going on here.

B) Find out what's really going on here and try to fix it.  This may
involve more work than you'd like, and digging around in reiserfs-utils
code and/or stracing will be required.  OTOH, submitting a patch and
having it accepted by the reiserfs team would be nifty.


-- 
Matt G / Dances With Crows
There is no Darkness in Eternity/But only Light too dim for us to see
"I backed up my brain to tape, but tar says the tape contains no data...."