Crash in postgres/linux on verly large database

Hi,

we have a table width about 60.000.000 entrys and about 4GB storage size.
When creating an index on this table the whole linux box freezes and the
reiser-fs file system is corrupted on not recoverable.

Does anybody have experience with this amount of data in postgres 7.4.2?
Is there a limit anywhere?

Thanks

Bernhard Ankenbrand