Re: non-critical ext3-fs errors?

Andreas Dilger
2002-07-23T20:47:43Z

On Jul 23, 2002 16:28 -0400, Ed Sweetman wrote:
> I notice these errors every now and then on my 100GB WD drive
> (partitioned into bits) and particularly on this partition that I
> compile everything on.
>
> EXT3-fs error (device ide0(3,7)): ext3_readdir: bad entry in directory
> #17821: directory entry across blocks - offset=24, inode=17822,
> rec_len=4076, name_len=3

This is definitely a bad entry - offset + rec_len (4100) != blocksize (4096).
Strange. You need to run e2fsck -f on this partition. It sounds like
you are getting some corruption or bit flips happening.

> Now these errors dont cause the system to panic like other ext3 errors
> do, so i'm wondering what the significance of these errors are.

Well, this is an error, and the next time the computer is restarted it
should force a full fsck on the partition. The other "panic" (oops)
situations are when things are totally shot and it is better to stop
doing anything than try and continue. In this case, it is possible to
continue, but that doesn't mean things are OK.

Cheers, Andreas
--
Andreas Dilger