Re: Kernel 2.4.15-pre6 / EXT3 / ls shows '.journal' on root-fs.

[Allan Sandfeld <linux@sneulv.dk>]

On Tuesday 20 November 2001 20:19, Andreas Dilger wrote:
> On Nov 19, 2001  17:55 -0800, Ryan Cumming wrote:
> > On November 19, 2001 17:37, you wrote:
> > > Even so, I'm wondering wether this removal is standardad
> > > procedure for hiding it once and for all or not?
>
> Very definitely NOT.  It _may_ work until the filesystem is unmounted,
> because the kernel will keep the file "open" so that the inode is not
> freed, but the next time you try to mount the filesystem it will
> complain about the journal being a bad inode.
>
> > On my system, the journal appears to have a perfectly normal inode number
> > for a root entry (#22), which makes me think that it's just a normal file
> > as far as the core filesystem code is concerned.
>
> Correct.  Normal, except that if you (as root) really work hard to fool
> with it, you can potentially cause problems.  Don't do that.  The problems
> are 99.99% harmless - can't mount as ext3, e2fsck will complain, maybe you
> can't boot your system, if it is the root fs.  If you really work at it,
> maybe you can corrupt your fs, but that would take serious effort plus a
> crash.
>
I just tried this... :)

First corrupted .journal is reported, then "journal deleted, mounting as 
ext2-only" followed by a forced e2fsck.

Thats what I call a well handled error...