From: gboutwel <gbo...@pr...> - 2005-02-17 20:55:33
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Tobias wrote: > you wrote on the colinux wiki that >10gb partitions make a problem, > right? Can you be more verbose, what kind of problem? I tried a 25GB partition > and it worked well, but after I read your post, I was a bit afraid > of loosing data... > > Thanks for your work on colinux! Tobias, Well we've had reports of large partitions (not necessarily images files) not being bootable. I'm not entirely sure it's a problem, could have been user, but I wanted to mention it just in case. As near as I can tell no data curruption or loss... Just not able to boot from it. They could even go so far as to mount it manually and it (seemed) to be alright. Oddly enough the partition/image wasn't even 10 gig, I think it was only 8, which is pretty much known to work. I'll try to elaborate on the wiki about this since it seems to be something that several people have expressed concern about. The point is that above about 10 Gig has not been seriously tested (as non of the developers and regular users I know of use it on partitions or images of those sizes) And I'll take this time to remind people that coLinux and all it's components, including the block device are still considered experimental. They are not intended for use on anything that is important any use without back-ups is at your own risk. George ------------------------------------------ Praize? Enter In... http://www.praize.com/ |
From: gboutwel <gbo...@pr...> - 2005-02-18 14:54:48
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Tobias wrote: > I have a 25GB parition and I am able to boot colinux from it. > I had nearly no problem: "cp -ax / /mnt/partition" and starting > with the partition. The only thing that I forgot in the beginning: I did > not copy the /dev/*. Good to know. Maybe I'll remove the item from the wiki. Was any of your partitions logical partitions in the extended partition, where where they all primary partitions? > I use it every day for half a year now (8GB file-image). Since > two weeks ago I had nearly no problem. Since then, I have signs of memory > corruption: CoLinux´s ext3 Filesystem gets damaged, and the whole > Windows System goes crazy step by step. ext3 will get corrupt, especially if coLinux crashes or is shutdown improperly. While this would probably not normally happen, with coLinux/VMWare, etc we are a little at the mercy of when the host OS decides to write out to disk. If we crash or close improperly we could have a situation where the host doesn't get the stuff in memory that needed to go to disk out to disk (for various and lots of reasons). On ext3 that would cause corruption. You might try a better journaling filesystem (such as reiserfs or XFS) > At this point I tried the change from 0.6.1 to 0.6.2 and from a > file-based coLinux to a partition (without severe problems). But > now the ext3 Filesystem on the partition gets damaged. I will check my > hardware (memory and disk), but I think it´s a software problem. (Checking > the corrupted file-system repeatedly corrupted the Windows Host (e.g. > Mozilla had problems with scrolling and with displayin the menu...)). Extermely odd. WIndows Host should not be that affected by coLinux unless it's seriously crashing or causing reboots when being run. > This gave rise to the question: Now that I have the partition, > can´t I use it with real Linux (overcoming the 512 MB -memory limit of > colinux (my machine has 2GB))? Here I ran into problems: Probably because > the /etc/fstab has to be adopted, I could not mount the filesystem. Yes you can install real Linux on the partition, boot into it and have FULL access to all hardware, unlike coLinux which is very limited. Basically if you use 0.6.2, you use alias= in your XML Config file for block_devices to make coLinux treat cobd devices as if they where hd<whatever> or sd<whatever> devices. After you do that you'll probably still need to do 'profiles' to prevent some things from happening in coLinux, that you want happening when running real linux. See the Mailing List Archives for discussions of this stuff. Or maybe someone running an set-up like this can pitch in at this time. > Do you have any pointers on booting coLinux and linux from the > same partition? I just got a thread mailed from a friend. Perhaps this > helps. I could write a wiki page on that... Just the above, if you figure it out and get it working. It would benefit a lot of people if you'd write wiki page about it. George ---------------------------- Love to laugh? Good Clean Jokes at Praize http://www.praize.com/jokes/ |
From: gboutwel <gbo...@pr...> - 2005-02-21 18:16:06
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po...@gm... wrote: > > Good to know. Maybe I'll remove the item from the wiki. Was > > any of your partitions logical partitions in the extended partition, > > where where they all primary partitions? > > The swap-partition and the ext3-partition are both primary partitions. This maybe why it worked for you, but didn't for the other person. I believe all his partitions where on the extended partition as logical partions. There maybe a bug/handling issue there. > I did not know that. I have never heared that reiserfs / xfs have > better journaling capacities. > I spend an hour comparing reiserfs / xfs with google but now I > am more confused than before. :-) Perhaps I try different partions one > with reiserfs, one with xfs and one with ext3, to have the problems > acculating :-) I've seen corruption on ext3 images with coLinux, I've since moved to reiserfs for my images and haven't seen anything as of yet. > I had two or three reboots in the whole half year working with > colinux, and even there I am not sure if it was colinux or something else. > So I have no idea, where these problems come from. I ran a memory test > the whole weekend without failures. :-( Exactly so I don't see why/how coLinux would be guilty of Windows Host curruption. > Thanks for the pointers. There are also some entries under the > topic "dual boot" in the wiki. I'll admit I haven't done it... Mostly cause the distro I wanted to do it with was still 2.4 until recently (I think). Maybe if it turns out this new version of it is 2.6.x based I'll try to run this sort of set-up in the near future. Yes, there have been 'notes', but not real 'HOW-TO' and this is asked about a lot. > What I found out by now: The aliasing seems to work, but... the > way from colinux to a real linux is not the best direction. A lot of hardware > depended stuff is obviously not present in the colinux system. > > I will see, if I come up with something usefull. Exactly, that's what I meant by wanting profiles so that you can have 'real hardware dependant' stuff not run for coLinux boots, but otherwise run (so your real linux boots still work as before). The truth is that coLinux "dual" booting with a real Linux is not an ideal situation. If you really want hardware access that coLinux doesn't provide you're going to have to code it so that coLinux does provide it, or wait till someone else does, or just boot real linux in a true dual boot situation. As much as we'd like coLinux to be the solution to all problems, it just can't be. George ---------------------------- Love to laugh? Good Clean Jokes at Praize http://www.praize.com/jokes/ |
From: gboutwel <gbo...@pr...> - 2005-02-22 14:41:58
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po...@gm... wrote: > > This maybe why it worked for you, but didn't for the other person. > > I believe all his partitions where on the extended partition > > as logical partions. There maybe a bug/handling issue there. > > If this is important for you I would make the effort of copying > the partition to an extended partition. But I am not eager to do that. > :-) Understandably. No, no need for you to go to all that trouble if you don't want to. I'm sure we'll come acrossed it again if it's a real problem, otherwise there'll be the typical silence about it. > This thing was, that it was a reproducable procedure: > 1) Windows running nicely > 2) Colinux Startup failed because of filesystem corruption > 3) Starting manual check. > 4) Windows goes crazy. (Mozilla icon appearing black/white, redraw > problems, Start Button does not react...) > 5) Rebooting colinux > 6) Windows back to normal again. Well, If you where doing an fsck on it, I can see this happening. Disk I/O has been known to block, slow down coLinux & the host and fsck COULD be an pretty intensive I/O situation. > Do you know if there is a way to overcome the 512 MB memory limit? > I heared that this is is a Windows limitation... My understanding is that there is nothing in coLinux that limits memory usage like that. It's most likely a Windows limitation and I'm not aware of any work arounds. George ----------------------------------------- Love to Chat? Start talking in the Christian Chat Rooms http://www.praize.com/chat/ |