Ok, for all you folks who want to know how to Reiser your ext2 partitions under Progeny/Debian(Woody), including /, here goes. I am assuming that you use GRUB. LILO folks will have to figure out the relevent portions on their own. ObWarning: This is potentially dangerous stuff. Past a certain point, your old kernel will no longer work, because it won't be able to read the Reiserfs partitions. YOU CAN ROYALLY SCREW UP YOUR SYSTEM! MAKE BACKUPS NOW! If you do not have a second computer with GRUB, make a bootable GRUB disk right away and test it. Ok, now that my conscience is free, we can continue. I will assume that you have two or more ext2 partitions. If you have only one ext2 partition, then you're going to have to either repartition it or think of some other brilliant way. I will also assume that you will use the latest kernel, 2.4.5. Our basic procedure is this: first, we reiser a blank partition; next, we copy all of the files on the root partition to the newly reisered partition; then we reiser the root partition, copy everything back, and badda-bing, badda-boom, we're done! Now for the LONG instructions: Step 1: apt-get install reiserfsprogs This is fairly obvious; this includes mkreiserfs, which we will need to make reisered partitions. Step 2: Since there is a small bug in the current 2.4.5 kernel with umount and reiserfs, we'll need to apply a patch from ftp://ftp.namesys.com/pub/reiserfs-for-2.4/linux-2.4.5-reiserfs-umount-fix. patch Step 3: Apply: patch -p0 < linux-2.4.5-reiserfs-umount-fix.patch 4. Compile kernel (don't forget to turn on experimental features and select ReiserFS!) Alternately, wait until 2.4.6 comes out and check www.namesys.com (the ReiserFS homepage) to see if the bug has been fixed. Step 4: Compile kernel with ReiserFS. (You will need to turn on the experimental options.) Try out the new kernel first before you do anything else. Step 5: For convinience, I will say that the two partitions you wish to reiser are /dev/hda6 and /dev/hda7, mount points / and /usr/local, respectively. Tar and gzip /usr/local and store local.tar.gz in /usr for the moment. Step 6: mkdir /hda7 and mkreiserfs /dev/hda7 Step 7: Edit /ect/fstab, changing the moint point and fs type of /dev/hda7 accordingly (/hda7 and reiserfs, respectively). Step 8: mount /hda7 Step 9: Copy all the files from the root partition (/) to /hda7. Since I only had one partition to worry about, cp -ax / /hda7 worked for me. The -x will only copy what's on the /dev/hda6 partition; obviously, you don't want to copy the /dev/hda7 partition. This also avoids copying /proc. However, if for some reason that doesn't work for you (extra partitions, what not), look at http://www.linuxdoc.org/HOWTO/mini/Hard-Disk-Upgrade/copy.html for more ways of copying your root partition. Step 9.5: mkdir /hda7/proc. I forgot about this one; I also found out that it isn't necessary to have a /proc directory, but it would probably be a Good Idea (TM). Step 10: Now what we want to do is make /hda7 our new root partition. So edit /hda7/etc/fstab (note: NOT /etc/fstab!) and change its mountpoint to /. I also commented out /dev/hda6, so that it wouldn't be mounted. Step 11: Similarily, edit /hda7/boot/grub/menu.lst to boot to /dev/hda7. Also, don't forget to change "root (hd0,5)" to "root (hd0,6)". Step 12: I found it necessary to edit /etc/fstab and change the mount points there, too. I really don't know why, as GRUB should have booted /dev/hda7, but I suspect it has to do with the copy of GRUB in the MBR. Step 13: Say a prayer and reboot. Step 14: If all goes well, you will be able to mkreiserfs /dev/hda6. Step 15: mkdir /hda6. Step 16: Edit /etc/fstab so that is has the mount point /hda6 and the fs Reiserfs. Step 17: mount /hda6. Step 18: At this point, you have a choice: count yourself lucky and keep hda7 as your new root partition, or copy everything back to hda6. I will assume you want to copy everything back; otherwise, you can mount hda6 wherever you want. To copy everything back, repeat steps 9 and 9.5, with appropriate changes (hda7 -> hda6). Step 19: Back to /hda6/etc/fstab: make hda6 /, hda7 whatever. Just make sure that there is a mount point for hda7. In my case, it was /usr/local, so I had to mkdir /hda5/usr/local. Step 20: Edit /hda6/boot/grub/menu.lst and change everything back to the way it originally was. Step 21: Reinstall GRUB to the MBR, making sure that it replicates what's in /hda6/boot/grub/menu.lst. I did not do this step, so when I rebooted, I got a GRUB error and everything froze. As a result, I had to write GRUB to a floppy in order to boot. Once I rewrote the MBR, everything was fine. Step 22: Just in case, you may want to comment out /etc/fstab, just to make sure. I think that rewriting the MBR will correct the problems I had at steps 12 and 21; hopefully someone can tell me for sure. Step 23: Pray REALLY hard and reboot. Step 24: If all goes well, you know have your root partition resiered! At this point, I imagine it would be trivial to convert other partitions to reiser. Simply archive their contents, mkreiserfs their partitions, and unarchive again. Also, your old kernel is now useless; delete it and edit GRUB (if you haven't already done so). Step 25: Share and enjoy! And in closing, here's your message of the day: 30 million physical source lines of code: $0 8,000 person years of development time: $0 Savings resulting from Free software: $1,000,000,000 The sweat, agony, and ultimate joy of running GNU/Linux: Priceless :Peter P.S. If you see any errors, respond post haste! I took notes as I did everything, but i may have overlooked a step.