Re: [Fwd: Fatal filesystem bug?]

[Stefan Smietanowski <stesmi@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi,

> We received it but some of the SGI people are on holiday.


Figures :)

> You didn't get errors in your log? Was you're filesystem shutdown when 
> this occured?


No errors or anything. Ummm. I find it difficult to read a file from a 
shutdown filesystem so no, it was mounted :)

> > Today I went into a directory to run a program and the binary was ..
> > broken. Couldn't load.
>
>
> You mean that the ondisk binary had changed and did not work anymore?


Bingo, since the problem persisted after I switched back (ie file still 
broken).

> > Tried recompiling from source and that failed too, so I looked at the
> > source file and it was missing the end of the file.
> > It was my source so I gather it was the last bytes that were missing.
> > ------
> >    return(num_cpus);
> > }
> >
> > ------
> > became
> > ------
> >    return(num_cpu
> > ------
>
>
> People have had problems with files containing NULL characters after a 
> unclean shutdown but You are the first I see with a actual damaged file.


Well, null-bytes-as-data is easily explained. This I haven't seen before.

And, I checked the file and it didn't contain a few garbage characters, 
the length was simply shorter. Ie my "s);\n\n" wasn't "\0\0\0" or something.

What's also odd is that I haven't gotten anything else broken in the 
trip. I could expect to have broken files all over the place but if I do 
I haven't found any yet.

> Does the problem go away when compiling the tree with egcs? Could you 
> try 2.4.16 when that is merged into CVS. It might be that 2.4.15 and 
> -pre was not that good. It was a pre kernel after all.


I rebooted the system quite fast after I noticed the problems and I 
didn't try recompiling with egcs, no. Perhaps I should, but it's just 
that it's a live system. "Well, Stefan, why are you using gcc3 and a cvs 
kernel on a live system?" "Duh, I donno, I'm stupid and I like bleeding 
edge". :) It's my home fileserver.

> Does this happen often?

Once so far. With 2.4.15-pre7. I'll be trying 2.4.16 shortly.

// Stefan