Re: 2.2.18/ext2: special file corruption?

Andreas Dilger (adilger@turbolinux.com)
Mon, 26 Feb 2001 10:48:58 -0700 (MST)


Ulrich Windl writes:
> I had an interesting effect: Due to NVdriver I had a lot of system
> freezes, and I had to reboot. Using e2fsck 1.19a (SuSE 7.1) I got the
> message that one specific "Special (device/socket/fifo) inode .. has
> non-zero size. FIXED."
>
> Interestingly I got the message for every reboot. So either the kernel
> corrupts the very same inode every time, or e2fsck does not really fix
> it, or the error simply doesn't exist. I think the kernel doesn't
> temporarily set the size to non-zero, so this seems strange.

It is strange that it thinks ".." is a special inode. Maybe e2fsck is
fixing the wrong problem (i.e. truncating the directory ".."), and it
later fixes the zero-length directory... Could you try two things:

1) unmount the filesystem and run e2fsck on the broken filesystem 1 or 2
times, to see if e2fsck is fixing the problem or not.

2) If it is fixing the problem you need to wait until the next time you have
a system crash, start in single user mode. If it is NOT fixing the problem
you can do this right away. Run "e2fsck -n" to see which inode number is
corrupt (the -n option means e2fsck will not fix the filesystem), and then
run "debugfs /dev/X", type "dump <inode_number>" and "ncheck inode_number"
at the prompt (note you NEED the <> around the inode number for dump).
Send the output.

Cheers, Andreas

-- 
Andreas Dilger  \ "If a man ate a pound of pasta and a pound of antipasto,
                 \  would they cancel out, leaving him still hungry?"
http://www-mddsp.enel.ucalgary.ca/People/adilger/               -- Dogbert
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