Mounting an external HDD fails each second time after xfs_repair

Mounting an external HDD fails each second time after xfs_repair

[Christoph Bier]

Hi all,

I use 14 partitions (one extended partition; partition table see
below) on my new external 400GB HDD that is managed by LVM2 on
Debian Sarge with a vanilla kernel 2.6.19.

The first time I mounted the HDD on my desktop everything worked
fine and I was able to copy 71GB of data. I unmounted and exported
the HDD and imported and mounted it on my laptop (commands see
below) running Ubuntu Edgy. Fine, too, I was able to read the data.
I exported again and imported again on my desktop. But now mounting
fails with

	mount: /dev/mm-extern/audiovideo: can't read superblock

/var/log/syslog prints:
[Output:
http://www.zvisionwelt.de/tmpdownloads/mount-failure-syslog.output]

The funny thing is that I just wanted to have a recent syslog print
to post here and tried again to mount the HDD and now it works!
[/var/log/syslog output:
http://www.zvisionwelt.de/tmpdownloads/mount-success-syslog.output]

I didn't change anything else after the mount failure mentioned
above! BUT: Reading fails while I wanted to have a look at the files
in lost+found.
[/var/log/syslog output:
http://www.zvisionwelt.de/tmpdownloads/read-failure-syslog.output]

Yesterday I used xfs_repair after the mount failure with the result
that two directories were removed:

# xfs_repair /dev/mm-extern/audiovideo
[Output: http://www.zvisionwelt.de/tmpdownloads/xfs_repair.output]

Then mounting worked again. But this morning it failed again as I
wrote above. I could repeat the scenario: xfs_repair -> mounting
works -> unmount -> mounting again fails -> xfs_repair -> mounting
works -> unmount -> mounting again fails -> waiting for about 90
minutes (without xfs_repair) it worked again. Strange ...

Looking for answers I found this message tonight:
<news:20031210174704.20943.qmail@web12304.mail.yahoo.com> Citation
from this message: "After [xfs_repair] the file system is mountable
for one time again."

Any ideas what's going wrong here? I found
<http://oss.sgi.com/projects/xfs/faq.html#dir2>. But this should be
fixed since 2.6.17.7.

Here is some more information:

Partition table:
http://www.zvisionwelt.de/tmpdownloads/partition-table.txt

The HDD has one volume group named "mm-extern". The logical volume
is named "audiovideo".

fstab entry:
/dev/mm-extern/audiovideo /media/samsung xfs defaults,noatime   0
    0

# xfs_info /media/samsung/
meta-data=/media/samsung         isize=256    agcount=16,
agsize=6104384 blks
         =                       sectsz=512
data     =                       bsize=4096   blocks=97670144,
imaxpct=25
         =                       sunit=0      swidth=0 blks, unwritten=1
naming   =version 2              bsize=4096
log      =internal               bsize=4096   blocks=32768, version=1
         =                       sectsz=512   sunit=0 blks
realtime =none                   extsz=65536  blocks=0, rtextents=0

Importing and mounting of the external HDD:
	vgscan
	vgimport mm-extern
	vgchange -a y /dev/mm-extern
	mount /media/samsung

Exporting and unmounting:
	umount /media/samsung
	vgchange -a n /dev/mm-extern
	vgexport mm-extern

# dpkg -l lvm\* | grep ^ii
ii  lvm-common     1.5.17         The Logical Volume Manager for
Linux (common
ii  lvm2           2.01.04-5      The Linux Logical Volume Manager
# dpkg -l xfsprogs | grep ^ii
ii  xfsprogs       2.6.20-1       Utilities for managing the XFS
filesystem

I successfully use xfs with LVM2 on an internal HDD.

Best,
  Christoph
-- 
+++ Typografie-Regeln: http://zvisionwelt.de/downloads.html (1.6)

Re: Mounting an external HDD fails each second time after xfs_repair

[Christoph Bier]

Christoph Bier schrieb am 10.01.2007 14:35:

[...]

> I didn't change anything else after the mount failure mentioned
> above! BUT: Reading fails while I wanted to have a look at the files
> in lost+found.
> [/var/log/syslog output:
> http://www.zvisionwelt.de/tmpdownloads/read-failure-syslog.output]

Only files in lost+found seem to be affected. I successfully opened
some others files.

[...]
-- 
+++ Typografie-Regeln: http://zvisionwelt.de/downloads.html (1.6)

Re: Mounting an external HDD fails each second time after xfs_repair

[Eric Sandeen]

Christoph Bier wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> I use 14 partitions (one extended partition; partition table see
> below) on my new external 400GB HDD that is managed by LVM2 on
> Debian Sarge with a vanilla kernel 2.6.19.
> 
> The first time I mounted the HDD on my desktop everything worked
> fine and I was able to copy 71GB of data. I unmounted and exported
> the HDD and imported and mounted it on my laptop (commands see
> below) running Ubuntu Edgy. Fine, too, I was able to read the data.
> I exported again and imported again on my desktop. But now mounting
> fails with
> 
> 	mount: /dev/mm-extern/audiovideo: can't read superblock
> 
> /var/log/syslog prints:
> [Output:
> http://www.zvisionwelt.de/tmpdownloads/mount-failure-syslog.output]

These are not xfs errors, you have device problems:

Jan 10 11:43:21 localhost kernel: sd 0:0:0:0: SCSI error: return code = 
0x00070000
Jan 10 11:43:21 localhost kernel: end_request: I/O error, dev sda, 
sector 234300481
Jan 10 11:43:22 localhost kernel: I/O error in filesystem ("dm-1") 
meta-data dev dm-1 block 0x17495339       ("xlog_bread") error 5 buf 
count 262144
Jan 10 11:43:22 localhost kernel: XFS: empty log check failed
Jan 10 11:43:22 localhost kernel: XFS: log mount/recovery failed: error 5
Jan 10 11:43:22 localhost kernel: XFS: log mount failed

XFS is responding -properly- to an I/O error from your disk.

-Eric

Re: Mounting an external HDD fails each second time after xfs_repair

[Christoph Bier]

Eric Sandeen schrieb am 10.01.2007 16:21:

> Christoph Bier wrote:
>> Hi all,
>> 
>> I use 14 partitions (one extended partition; partition table see
>> below) on my new external 400GB HDD that is managed by LVM2 on
>> Debian Sarge with a vanilla kernel 2.6.19.
>> 
>> The first time I mounted the HDD on my desktop everything worked
>> fine and I was able to copy 71GB of data. I unmounted and exported
>> the HDD and imported and mounted it on my laptop (commands see
>> below) running Ubuntu Edgy. Fine, too, I was able to read the data.
>> I exported again and imported again on my desktop. But now mounting
>> fails with
>> 
>> 	mount: /dev/mm-extern/audiovideo: can't read superblock
>> 
>> /var/log/syslog prints:
>> [Output:
>> http://www.zvisionwelt.de/tmpdownloads/mount-failure-syslog.output]
> 
> These are not xfs errors, you have device problems:
> 
> Jan 10 11:43:21 localhost kernel: sd 0:0:0:0: SCSI error: return code = 
> 0x00070000
> Jan 10 11:43:21 localhost kernel: end_request: I/O error, dev sda, 
> sector 234300481
> Jan 10 11:43:22 localhost kernel: I/O error in filesystem ("dm-1") 
> meta-data dev dm-1 block 0x17495339       ("xlog_bread") error 5 buf 
> count 262144
> Jan 10 11:43:22 localhost kernel: XFS: empty log check failed
> Jan 10 11:43:22 localhost kernel: XFS: log mount/recovery failed: error 5
> Jan 10 11:43:22 localhost kernel: XFS: log mount failed
> 
> XFS is responding -properly- to an I/O error from your disk.

Hm. Ok, thanks for your answer!

Best,
  Christoph
-- 
+++ Typografie-Regeln: http://zvisionwelt.de/downloads.html (1.6)

Re: Mounting an external HDD fails each second time after xfs_repair

[Peter Grandi]

>>> On Wed, 10 Jan 2007 14:35:34 +0100, Christoph Bier
>>> <christoph.bier@web.de> said:

christoph.bier> Hi all, I use 14 partitions (one extended
christoph.bier> partition; partition table see below) on my new
christoph.bier> external 400GB HDD that is managed by LVM2 on
christoph.bier> Debian Sarge with a vanilla kernel 2.6.19.

Fascinating setup :-).

We can of course assume, given the care with which you have
designed your setup, and the astuteness of your choice to omit
any details as to the hardware (what type of HD interface, what
type of external bus, the bridge and the host adapter chipsets,
the disk and the power supply ratings) that you have advisedly
chosen the external disk for 100% reliable operation, as you
have checked thoroughly that the power supply of the case is
sufficient and that both chipsets (USB? FW?) are well known for
being bug-free and reliable for use with the relevant GNU/Linux
mass storage driver... :-)

christoph.bier> The first time I mounted the HDD on my desktop
christoph.bier> everything worked fine [ ... ]

A typo here: you typed "worked fine" instead of "seemed to work
fine".

Re: Mounting an external HDD fails each second time after xfs_repair

[Christoph Bier]

Peter Grandi schrieb am 10.01.2007 23:39:

[...]

> We can of course assume, [...] that you have advisedly
> chosen the external disk for 100% reliable operation, as you
> have checked thoroughly that the power supply of the case is
> sufficient and that both chipsets (USB? FW?) are well known for
> being bug-free and reliable for use with the relevant GNU/Linux
> mass storage driver... :-)

Yes, you can. But OT here.

Regards,
    Christoph
-- 
+++ Typografie-Regeln: http://zvisionwelt.de/downloads.html (1.6)