[gentoo-server] 3.3 TB reiserfs volume not mounting at boot, and is unusable afterwards

[Jared Klett]

hello Gentoo server folks,

	I have a 2U server with a 3ware 9500-12MI controller. there are two  
80 GB drives in RAID-1 which servers as the boot device, and ten 400  
GB drives in RAID-5 which I want to have mounted as a single volume  
at /data.

	if I start fresh and create the filesystem after the system has  
booted, and mount it, all is well. however, when I reboot the system,  
the filesystem won't be mounted and I'll get an error.

	to start, I used GNU parted to partition the device, which is at / 
dev/sdb. here's a transcript of the session:

Using /dev/sdb
(parted) mklabel
New disk label type? gpt
(parted) print
Disk geometry for /dev/sdb: 0kB - 3600GB
Disk label type: gpt
Number  Start   End     Size    File system  Name                  Flags
(parted) mkpart
Partition type?  [primary]?
File system type?  [ext2]? reiserfs
Start? 0.0
End? 3600G
(parted) print
Disk geometry for /dev/sdb: 0kB - 3600GB
Disk label type: gpt
Number  Start   End     Size    File system  Name                  Flags
1       17kB    3600GB  3600GB
(parted) quit

	I then do a plain:

root ~ # mkreiserfs /dev/sdb1
mkreiserfs 3.6.19 (2003 www.namesys.com)
Guessing about desired format.. Kernel 2.6.17-gentoo-r4 is running.
Format 3.6 with standard journal
Count of blocks on the device: 878881520
Number of blocks consumed by mkreiserfs formatting process: 35033
Blocksize: 4096
Hash function used to sort names: "r5"
Journal Size 8193 blocks (first block 18)
Journal Max transaction length 1024
inode generation number: 0
UUID: 80864192-b2b1-4f20-ab16-a1242e5cfa1b
ATTENTION: YOU SHOULD REBOOT AFTER FDISK!
         ALL DATA WILL BE LOST ON '/dev/sdb1'!
Continue (y/n):y
Initializing journal - 0%....20%....40%....60%....80%....100%
Syncing..ok

root ~ # mount /dev/sdb1 /data
root ~ # df -h
[ ... snip ... ]
/dev/sdb1             3.3T   33M  3.3T   1% /data

	and all is well.

	however, when I update /etc/fstab and reboot the machine, the kernel  
loads and mounts the reiserfs filesystems on the boot volume, but  
then I get:

reiserfs_open: the reiserfs superblock cannot be found /dev/sdb1.
Failed to open the filesystem.

	here's a screenshot of the console:

http://www.project55.net/noloveatboot.png

	I hit Control-D and allow the system to finish booting. then I  
attempted this:

root ~ # mount /dev/sdb1 /data
mount: you must specify the filesystem type
root ~ # mount -t reiserfs /dev/sdb1 /data
mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/sdb1,
        missing codepage or other error
        In some cases useful info is found in syslog - try
        dmesg | tail  or so
root ~ # dmesg | tail
[ ... snip ...]
FAT: bogus number of reserved sectors
VFS: Can't find a valid FAT filesystem on dev sdb1.
ReiserFS: sdb1: warning: sh-2021: reiserfs_fill_super: can not find  
reiserfs on sdb1

	this message makes me a bit suspicious. I've tried creating the  
reiserfs filesystem from inside parted using mkfs, but I just get  
this, in spite of having reiserfsprogs emerged before I emerged parted:

No Implementation: Support for creating reiserfs file systems is not  
implemented yet.

	I'm running kernel version 2.6.17-gentoo-r4, with the following  
enabled:

Block layer  --->
  [*] Support for Large Block Devices
Partition Types  --->
  [*] Advanced partition selection
  ...
  [*] EFI GUID Partition support

	just for complete information overload, here is the status of the  
RAID unit as reported by the 3ware controller:

Status: OK
Capacity: 3.27 TB
Type: RAID 5
Stripe: 256kB

	any insights would be most welcome!

cheers,

- Jared

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