Re: help about ext3 read-only issue on ext3(2.6.16.30)

[Eric Sandeen <sandeen@redhat.com>]

On 12/1/12 8:22 AM, Yafang Shao wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> We have many x86 boards, and we've been using 2.6.16.60 for a long
> time. Before time we occasionally found ext3 was switched to read-only
> while services were running, and we took it for granted it must be
> some hardware problems.
>     But recently this issue happens frequently, both in old boards and
> new boards. We've analyzed logs, and in one board we did find
> exceptional reboot (but ext3 error happened 9 days after), and in
> another board we found mptbase recovery routine, but in all other
> boards there's no suspicious output at all.
>     The only change with the system is some application updates, and
> apps now put more IO burden on disks.
>     The error always happened in ext3_readdir, like this:
> 
>  EXT3-fs error (device sda7): ext3_readdir: bad entry in directory
> #6685458: rec_len is smaller than minimal - offset=3860, inode=0,
> rec_len=0, name_len=0
> 
> Aborting journal on device sda7.
> 
> EXT3-fs error (device sda7) in start_transaction: Readonly filesystem
> 
> Aborting journal on device sda7.
> 
> ext3_abort called.
> 
> EXT3-fs error (device sda7): ext3_journal_start_sb: Detected aborted journal
> 
> Remounting filesystem read-only
> 
> __journal_remove_journal_head: freeing b_committed_data
> 
> 
> 
> We highly doubt it's hardware failures with this frequency in mind, so
> we're wondering regarding to this issue if there's some ext3 bug-fix
> having merged into mainline but not in our old kernel?

Absolutely there are.  There have been 87 changes just to namei.c since 2.6.16.
You could look through git logs to see if anything looks applicable.

You might try:

ef2b02d3e617cb0400eedf2668f86215e1b0e6af ext34: ensure do_split leaves enough free space in both blocks

but to be honest, sticking with such an old kernel means you are largely on your own, or may need contract help if you can't resolve it.

-Eric

> if hardware problem cause it, what's exactly are these hardware problems?
> 
> 
> 
> Thanks & Regards!
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