Re: ext2 error

Theodore Y. Ts'o (tytso@mit.edu)
Tue, 15 Sep 1998 01:19:12 -0400


Date: Mon, 14 Sep 1998 13:47:00 -0400
From: Theo Van Dinter <felicity@kluge.net>

I just noticed an error message (kernel 2.0.35) that has me a tad baffled:

EXT2-fs error (device 08:11): ext2_find_entry: directory #5996921
contains a hole at offset 5509120

now, according to /proc/devices, major 8 is sd -- fine. minor 11
seems to be sda11, but there are only 4 partitions on the disk.

The device number is in hex, so its refering to the dev /dev/sdb1.

(I'm assuming since the error was found, the error was also fixed. I
started getting baffled when I thought I would umount the fs and do
fsck just to be sure. Since things seem to point to a non-existant
partition, I'm stuck.)

No, the kernel doesn't fix it; it just ignores the empty block and
continues reading the directory. By itself a hole in a directory is
nothing major, the kernel can simply scan the other blocks in the
directory. However, it's a "this should never happen" situation, so
there might be other damage to the filesystem which hasn't been
discovered yet. So yes, it would be a good idea to unmount the
filesystem and then run fsck just to be sure.

- Ted

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