fs corruption 2.3.41

[Richard B. Johnson]

I have been running 2.3.41 for a few weeks. Some small files
are getting corrupted. It's interesting that they are files
that are not normally opened for write.

Script started on Tue Feb  8 12:42:08 2000

# od -xa README
0000000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000
        nul nul nul nul nul nul nul nul nul nul nul nul nul nul nul nul
*
0000200 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000
        nul nul nul nul nul nul nul nul nul nul nul nul nul nul
0000216
# exit
Script done on Tue Feb  8 12:42:19 2000

Here is a 'typical' README file which is now filled with nulls. So
far, I have found 12 to 15 such small files in a 3 gigabyte partition,
with inodes that contain just nulls. e2fsck doesn't find anything wrong.

I have not found any file greater than 1024 bytes in length that has
been corrupted. It seems to be happening only to small files.

I use a BusLogic SCSI controller with no such previous problems.

I can duplicate the problem.

# echo "foo" >README
# cat README
foo
# cd /usr/src/linux
# make clean
# make bzImage
## Wait to finish
# cd ~
# cat README
.NULLS

Now, if I do
# echo "foo" >README
# sync

Then rebuild the kernel, the file contents are okay, but they
might not be if I unmount the file-system and remount it.

Cheers,
Dick Johnson

Penguin : Linux version 2.3.41 on an i686 machine (800.63 BogoMips).