Re: Kernel 2.4.15-pre6 / EXT3 / ls shows '.journal' on root-fs.

[Mike Fedyk]

On Thu, Nov 22, 2001 at 09:48:37AM +0100, Allan Sandfeld wrote:
> On Tuesday 20 November 2001 20:19, Andreas Dilger wrote:
> > On Nov 19, 2001  17:55 -0800, Ryan Cumming wrote:
> > > On November 19, 2001 17:37, you wrote:
> > > > Even so, I'm wondering wether this removal is standardad
> > > > procedure for hiding it once and for all or not?
> >
> > Very definitely NOT.  It _may_ work until the filesystem is unmounted,
> > because the kernel will keep the file "open" so that the inode is not
> > freed, but the next time you try to mount the filesystem it will
> > complain about the journal being a bad inode.
> >
> > > On my system, the journal appears to have a perfectly normal inode number
> > > for a root entry (#22), which makes me think that it's just a normal file
> > > as far as the core filesystem code is concerned.
> >
> > Correct.  Normal, except that if you (as root) really work hard to fool
> > with it, you can potentially cause problems.  Don't do that.  The problems
> > are 99.99% harmless - can't mount as ext3, e2fsck will complain, maybe you
> > can't boot your system, if it is the root fs.  If you really work at it,
> > maybe you can corrupt your fs, but that would take serious effort plus a
> > crash.
> >
> I just tried this... :)
> 
> First corrupted .journal is reported, then "journal deleted, mounting as 
> ext2-only" followed by a forced e2fsck.
> 
> Thats what I call a well handled error...

Did you also have ext2 linked into your kernel (ie, not as a module)?

If you did, then if you kernel didn't have ext2 it probably would've stopped
right there because ext3 won't mount without a journal.

Mike