Do not use Reiserfs for mission critical applications
From SusoSight
I'll say that again. Do not use Reiserfs for anything that you consider important. This includes mission critical applications, servers, workstations and backup filesystems. Basically, if you care about your data being recoverable in a reasonable amount of time (less than 2 hours), don't use it.
It may be fast, offer larger limits on file and filesystem size, but in the end, if it takes 2 days for you to rebuild tree of a 500GB filesystem, it is not even close to being worth the advantages.
That's right folks, an fsck --rebuild-tree operation on a 500GB filesystem (not unreasonable for 2007) is going to take 2 days at its current speed. And that's just pass 0. Now this machine isn't the fastest and it is on software raid, but I know that recovery of an ext3 filesystem would have only taken 1-2 hours at the most. Fortunately, this only happened to me on a backup server, but it will keep me from using Reiserfs in the future for anything.
This has nothing to do with Hans Reiser and his missing wife Nina, although if you ask me, Hans should go to jail for wasting everybody's time.
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And guess what, after 3 days of the rebuild-tree operation, it self aborts and leaves me screwed:
rewrite_file: 3 items of file [224062 224091] moved to [224062 2609384] rewrite_file: 2 items of file [224062 224092] moved to [224062 2609385] rewrite_file: 2 items of file [224062 224093] moved to [224062 2609386] rewrite_file: 3 items of file [224062 224094] moved to [224062 2609387] rewrite_file: 2 items of file [224062 224095] moved to [224062 2609388] rewrite_file: 2 items of file [224062 224096] moved to [224062 2609389] vpf-10680: The file [224062 2609389] has the wrong block count in the StatData (248) - corrected to (0) rewrite_file: 2 items of file [224062 224097] moved to [224062 2609390] rewrite_file: 2 items of file [224098 224099] moved to [224098 2609391] vpf-10680: The file [224098 2609391] has the wrong block count in the StatData (16) - corrected to (0) rewrite_file: 1 items of file [224098 224100] moved to [224098 2609392] vpf-10680: The file [224098 2609392] has the wrong block count in the StatData (8) - corrected to (0) rewrite_file: 2 items of file [224542 224647] moved to [224542 2609393] vpf-10670: The file [224542 2609393] has the wrong size in the StatData (0) - corrected to (4096) rewrite_file: 2 items of file [224542 224648] moved to [224542 2609394] The object [224542 2609394] has wrong mode (?---------) - corrected to -rw------- vpf-10670: The file [224542 2609394] has the wrong size in the StatData (0) - corrected to (4096) vpf-10680: The file [224542 2609394] has the wrong block count in the StatData (0) - corrected to (8) rewrite_file: 2 items of file [224542 224649] moved to [224542 2609395] vpf-10670: The file [224542 2609395] has the wrong size in the StatData (0) - corrected to (8192) rewrite_file: 2 items of file [224542 224650] moved to [224542 2609396] vpf-10670: The file [224542 2609396] has the wrong size in the StatData (0) - corrected to (73728) rewrite_file: 2 items of file [224542 224651] moved to [224542 2609397] The object [224542 2609397] has wrong mode (?---------) - corrected to -rw------- vpf-10670: The file [224542 2609397] has the wrong size in the StatData (0) - corrected to (4096) vpf-10680: The file [224542 2609397] has the wrong block count in the StatData (0) - corrected to (8) rewrite_file: 2 items of file [224542 224652] moved to [224542 2609398] The object [224542 2609398] has wrong mode (?---------) - corrected to -rw------- vpf-10670: The file [224542 2609398] has the wrong size in the StatData (0) - corrected to (4096) vpf-10680: The file [224542 2609398] has the wrong block count in the StatData (0) - corrected to (8) rewrite_file: 2 items of file [224542 224653] moved to [224542 2609399] rewrite_file: 1 items of file [224542 224654] moved to [224542 2609400] vpf-10680: The file [224542 2609400] has the wrong block count in the StatData (8) - corrected to (0) rewrite_file: 2 items of file [224542 224680] moved to [224542 2609401] rewrite_file: 2 items of file [224542 224681] moved to [224542 2609402] rewrite_file: 2 items of file [224542 224682] moved to [224542 2609403] vpf-10680: The file [224542 2609403] has the wrong block count in the StatData (48) - corrected to (0) rewrite_file: 2 items of file [224542 224683] moved to [224542 2609404] vpf-10680: The file [224542 2609404] has the wrong block count in the StatData (16) - corrected to (0) rewrite_file: 2 items of file [224542 224684] moved to [224542 2609405] rewrite_file: 2 items of file [224542 224685] moved to [224542 2609406] rewrite_file: 2 items of file [224542 224686] moved to [224542 2609407] rewrite_file: 2 items of file [224542 224687] moved to [224542 2609408] The object [224542 2609408] has wrong mode (?---------) - corrected to -rw------- vpf-10670: The file [224542 2609408] has the wrong size in the StatData (0) - corrected to (4096) vpf-10680: The file [224542 2609408] has the wrong block count in the StatData (0) - corrected to (8) rewrite_file: 2 items of file [224542 224688] moved to [224542 2609409] rewrite_file: 2 items of file [224542 224692] moved to [224542 2609410] rewrite_file: 2 items of file [224542 224693] moved to [224542 2609411] vpf-10680: The file [224542 2609411] has the wrong block count in the StatData (16) - corrected to (0) rewrite_file: 2 items of file [224542 224694] moved to [224542 2609412] rewrite_file: 2 items of file [224542 224695] moved to [224542 2609413] rewrite_file: 2 items of file [224542 224696] moved to [224542 2609414] rewrite_file: 2 items of file [224542 224697] moved to [224542 2609415] vpf-10680: The file [224542 2609415] has the wrong block count in the StatData (16) - corrected to (0) rewrite_file: 3 items of file [224542 224698] moved to [224542 2609416] lost+found.c 348 pass_3a_look_for_lost look_for_lost: The entry 'lost+found' could not be found in the root directory. Aborted
Now when I try to run fsck I get:
Bad root block 0. (--rebuild-tree did not complete)
No kidding, its because you choose to abort after 3 days.
UPDATE: After another run and 3 more days, it finished successfully and I was able to access my data. This proves that the data was recoverable, but it turns out that what it called a recovery was actually scattering some of the files and directories all over the place and putting things in places that they weren't before. So reiserfs is not for reliability.