How to remove a corrupted dir in an ext4 FS?

How to remove a corrupted dir in an ext4 FS?

[Jesus Sanchez Melendro]

After a corruption in an ext4 filesystem, I've checked and moved to the 
correct position all the files and dirs in lost+found, but one of the dirs is 
corrupted.

The "ls -l" command says:
d????????? ? ? ? ? ? /lost+found/#90116

If I try to remove it with "rmdir" or "rm -rf" or "mv" or "unlink", all 
commands say:
<command used>: failed to remove `#90116': Input/output error

Running "fsck" says that the filesystem is OK.

Is there a way to remove that corrupted dir?

Re: How to remove a corrupted dir in an ext4 FS?

[Andreas Dilger]

On 2010-10-24, at 19:12, Jesus Sanchez Melendro wrote:
> After a corruption in an ext4 filesystem, I've checked and moved to the 
> correct position all the files and dirs in lost+found, but one of the dirs is 
> corrupted.
> 
> The "ls -l" command says:
> d????????? ? ? ? ? ? /lost+found/#90116
> 
> If I try to remove it with "rmdir" or "rm -rf" or "mv" or "unlink", all 
> commands say:
> <command used>: failed to remove `#90116': Input/output error
> 
> Running "fsck" says that the filesystem is OK.
> 
> Is there a way to remove that corrupted dir?

You can probably check "lsattr /lost+found/#90116" to see if either the "i" (immutable) or "a" (append-only) attribute is set.  If yes, then running "chattr -i -a/lost+found/#90116" will remove those attributes, and it should be removable.

Cheers, Andreas

Re: How to remove a corrupted dir in an ext4 FS?

[Ted Ts'o]

On Mon, Oct 25, 2010 at 10:16:55PM +0800, Andreas Dilger wrote:
> On 2010-10-24, at 19:12, Jesus Sanchez Melendro wrote:
> > After a corruption in an ext4 filesystem, I've checked and moved to the 
> > correct position all the files and dirs in lost+found, but one of the dirs is 
> > corrupted.
> > 
> > The "ls -l" command says:
> > d????????? ? ? ? ? ? /lost+found/#90116
> > 
> > If I try to remove it with "rmdir" or "rm -rf" or "mv" or "unlink", all 
> > commands say:
> > <command used>: failed to remove `#90116': Input/output error
> > 
> > Running "fsck" says that the filesystem is OK.
> > 
> > Is there a way to remove that corrupted dir?
> 
> You can probably check "lsattr /lost+found/#90116" to see if either
> the "i" (immutable) or "a" (append-only) attribute is set.  If yes,
> then running "chattr -i -a/lost+found/#90116" will remove those
> attributes, and it should be removable.

If it was an immutable or apppend-only attribute, it should have
resulted in a "Operation not permitted" error.  I suspect the problem
may be an underlying disk error.  You might want to check "dmesg", and
see if the hard drive is reporting I/O errors.  It may very well be
that you have problems a lot more serious than just a corrupted file
system.  If so, you might want to consider making an immediate backup
right away, and strongly consider replacing the hard drive if you find
I/O errors in your system logs.

					- Ted