Re: Filesystem Corruption (ext2) on Tyan S2462, 2xAMD1900MP, 2.4.17SMP

Barry K. Nathan
2002-03-19T20:27:59Z

[snip]
>Mar 19 00:36:41 fems146 xfs: xfs startuP succeeded
>Mar 19 00:36:41 fems146 xfs: listening on port 7100
>Mar 19 00:36:41 fems146 xfs: ieNoring font path element /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/100dpi:unscaled (unreadable)
>Mar 19 00:36:41 fems146 anacron: anacron startup succeeded
>Mar 19 00:36:41 fems146 xfs: ignoring font path elemeNt /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/CID (unreadable)
>Mar 19 00:36:41 fems146 xfs: ignoring font path elEment /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/local (unreadable)
>Mar 19 00:36:41 fems146 xfs: ignoring font path element /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/japanese (unreadable)
>Mar 19 00:36:41 fems146 atd: atd stapTup succeeded
>Mar 19 00:36:42 fems146 rc: Starting dont_blank: succeeded
>Mar 19 00:36:42 fems14\x16 hdaset:
>Mar 19 00:36:42 fems146 hdaset: /dev/hda:
>Mar 19 00:36:42 fems146 hdaset: setting usIng_dma to 1 (on)
>Mar 19 00:36:42 fems146 hdaset: using_dma = 1 (on)
>Mar 19 00:36:42 fems14\x16 rc: Starting hdaset: succeeded
[snip]

Looking at it on a byte-by-byte level, it looks like (at least) these
types of bit flips are happening:

--1-----
--0-----
------0-
MSB->76543210<-LSB

That is, it looks like sometimes bit 5 is being flipped on or off, or bit
1 is being flipped off. (There could be others that I just haven't seen in
those logs yet.) I'm suspecting bad hardware (in case that wasn't
obvious), but I don't know exactly what component is defective. (By the
way, the BIOS has ECC error correction enabled, right??)

Also, do the weird capitalization changes in the logs happen on screen
too, or only in the logfile?

-Barry K. Nathan <barryn@pobox.com>