Re: Corrupted files on 2.4.18.

[Steve Lord <lord@sgi.com>]

On Wed, 2002-03-20 at 09:23, Bas wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> The following has happened:
> 
> Today I was editing some files on my / filesystem. I had made some changes
> to one of my startup scripts and the configuration file for samba, which are
> one the same filesystem. When I tried to look into the logfile directory,
> which is a separate lv, I could run ls, but when I ran ls -la, it hung. Only
> option was to reboot, but I waited a little, probably enough time to clear
> the changes to disk. After a reboot I noticed the files I had changed were
> indeed changed, the still had the same size, but were filled with ^@
> characters -> This was visible through vim. Funny thing is that the backup
> files vi makes (.rc.samba.swp) were also damaged and not useable anymore.

Almost certainly the hung process was holding sufficient locks that it
wedged syncing activity on the system and waiting did you no good. I do
not think there is anything in a later kernel which would help with
this. The hang is the bug here really - and we have no information about
what that was.

Steve

> 
> Specs:
> gcc-2.95.3
> glibc-2.2.5
> binutils-2.11.2
> linux 2.4.18
> The first 2.4.18 xfs patch.
> evms 0.9.2 -> no lvm anymore.
> 
> lvs:
> /, /usr, /home, /var.
> 
> Downloading the entire xfs-2.4 cvs takes a lot of time, but if necessary, I
> can do that. There used to be some weekly patches, maybe the location has
> changed, but I can't seem to find them anymore.
> 
> Groeten,
> Bas.
-- 

Steve Lord                                      voice: +1-651-683-3511
Principal Engineer, Filesystem Software         email: lord@sgi.com