Re: non-critical ext3-fs errors and IDE issues with 2.4.19-rc3

Ed Sweetman
2002-07-24T00:16:46Z

On Tue, 2002-07-23 at 16:48, Andreas Dilger wrote:
> 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

I rebooted after setting max mount count to 1 so it would force and
fsck, I got no error messages. So, I dropped to shell in single mode
and attempted to unmount /usr (the partition with the issues) but umount
insisted /usr was busy. I looked at ps, nothing executed from usr. I
looked at my shell, nothing executed on /usr. I looked at lsof, nothing
showing /usr files being accessed. It didn't make any sense at all but
then there are other surprises with 2.4.19-rc3 that come later. I fsck
-f'd the partition again with dma disabled and still, no errors
reported. Either it fixed them behind the scenes or didn't detect
them. I then went and looked at my dmesg to notice this interesting
message

PDC20262: chipset revision 1
ide: Skipping Promise RAID controller.

Now this is funny. I dont remember telling the kernel to skip my other
ide controller. I double checked the config, nope, no ignoring or
skipping of the promise ide controller. This did not occur in previous
kernels, it seems to be brand new in rc3. I confess to having used jam
kernels with rc2 and rc1 though which had other ide patches in it. So
what gives with this ? Why is rc3 skipping the promise ide
controller? And why is fsck not reporting any fixes to errors that
dmesg shows is being detected during use?