Possible bug in mkfs.ext3

Sun Sep 21 00:01:35 UTC 2014

On 09/20/2014 12:07 AM, Andreas Dilger wrote:
> On Sep 19, 2014, at 7:56 PM, jd1008 <jd1008 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> I am reporting this on the advice of the Fedora Users Mailing List Member.
>>
>> This the mailing list exchange outlining the problem with specifying -S to mkfs, and it's subsequent consequences when fsck is run.
>>
>> I am reporting this per suggestions made to me on the Fedora Users Mailing List.
> I would say that "mke2fs -S" is going to lead to worse corruption rather
> than improving the situation in 999 times of 1000.  It should only be
> used by someone who knows very specific details of the filesystem and
> how it was corrupted.  I'm tempted to make it an "undocumented" feature,
> since I suspect it will do more harm than good in most cases.  "-S"
> should at least call check_plausibility() and proceed_question() before
> clobbering the filesystem.
>
> Better would be something like the "findsuper" utility in the e2fsprogs
> sources (attached here for your conveniece).  Usually in cases like this
> the problem is actually something with the partition table, and not that
> all of your backup superblocks have mysteriously been corrupted at the
> same time.
>
> Cheers, Andreas
>
>> The following is the mailing list exchange:
>>
>>
>> On 09/18/2014 07:01 PM, Robert Nichols wrote:
>>> On 09/18/2014 12:37 PM, jd1008 wrote:
>>>> Is there any other tool that can extract files from a partition that
>>>> seems to have corrupted superblocks?
>>>> I tried dumpe2fs, and fsck -b <blockNumber>
>>>> to no avail. Tried all available block numbers that are listed
>>>> when original mkfs was done, and it's output was saved.
>>>>
>>>> None of the blocks seem to work - all of them have invalid magic.
>>> Verify that the partition table still appears to be correct.  If it
>>> is pointing to the wrong starting location, none of the super blocks
>>> will appear in the expected places. You might see if /testdisk/can
>>> find any intact super blocks.
>>>
>>> Consider using a hex editor to look at some of the super blocks.
>>> They should contain the same data.  The data that actually appears
>>> there might give some clue as to what happened.
>>>
>>> As a last ditch recovery effort, run mke2fs/mke3fs with the "-S"
>>> option to initialize the super blocks and group descriptors only.
>>> Do this only with (or on) a backup copy of the partition, since
>>> it is potentially destructive.  Then see if /debugfs/can make
>>> sense of the filesystem, and if so, run /fsck/with the "-f"
>>> option to repair the metadata.
>>
>> On 09/19/2014 07:16 PM, Chris Murphy wrote:
>>> On Sep 19, 2014, at 11:49 AM, jd1008 <jd1008 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> On 09/19/2014 08:39 AM, Robert Nichols wrote:
>>>>> On 09/18/2014 10:57 PM, jd1008 wrote:
>>>>>> I ran mkfs.ext3 -S  /dev/sdc7
>>>>>> then ran fsck.ext3 -y /dev/sdc7
>>>>>> it blew away EVERYTHING :)
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Back to square one and re-dd original to test drive
>>>>>> and start over.
>>>>> Ouch!  That _used_ to work.  Trying it just now, "mke3fs -S" seems
>>>>> to clear a substantial portion of the inodes, which the manpage
>>>>> specifically says it should _not_ do, and then /fsck/ completes the
>>>>> destruction by moving all of the remaining inodes to lost+found.
>>>>>
>>>>> Sorry about that.
>>>>>
>>>> Can raise a bug against it?
>>> Chances are this is an upstream bug, or a misunderstanding. You should post your reproduce steps to the ext4 list, what you expect to happen based on man page, and what actually happens.
>>> http://vger.kernel.org/vger-lists.html#linux-ext4
>>>
>>>
>>> Chris Murphy
>>>

Update:
Since I had believed, and it has been mentioned, that there is a 
possibility that the partition
table itself may have been clobbered in a way to change the real 
starting address of the partition,
I decided to search for possible candidates for a superblock using fsck 
in a shell script as follows:

sb=0; while [ $sb -lt 429496729600 ]; do
possibleSB=`e2fsck -n -b $sb /dev/sdc7 2>&1 | grep 'The superblock could 
not be read|Bad magic number'`
[ "x$possibleSB" = "x" ] && echo $sb - "$possibleSB"
sb=`expr $sb + 512`
done > possibleSB

I found these blocks, the value of which might hint that the current 
start block of the partition may have been altered:
1325056
2373632
3815424
6553600
13376000
13391872
13407744
13423616
13439488

Running fsck /dev/sdc7:

for sb in 1325056 2373632 3815424 6553600 13376000 13391872 13407744 
13423616 13439488 ; do
echo fsck -b $sb /dev/sdc7
fsck -b $sb /dev/sdc7
echo =================
done

=================================================================================
fsck -b 1325056 /dev/sdc7
fsck from util-linux 2.24.2
e2fsck 1.42.8 (20-Jun-2013)
Superblock has an invalid journal (inode 8).
Clear<y>? no
fsck.ext2: Illegal inode number while checking ext3 journal for /dev/sdc7

/dev/sdc7: ***** FILE SYSTEM WAS MODIFIED *****

/dev/sdc7: ********** WARNING: Filesystem still has errors **********

=================
fsck -b 2373632 /dev/sdc7
fsck from util-linux 2.24.2
e2fsck 1.42.8 (20-Jun-2013)
Superblock has an invalid journal (inode 8).
Clear<y>? no
fsck.ext2: Illegal inode number while checking ext3 journal for /dev/sdc7

/dev/sdc7: ***** FILE SYSTEM WAS MODIFIED *****

/dev/sdc7: ********** WARNING: Filesystem still has errors **********

=================
fsck -b 3815424 /dev/sdc7
fsck from util-linux 2.24.2
e2fsck 1.42.8 (20-Jun-2013)
Superblock has an invalid journal (inode 8).
Clear<y>? no
fsck.ext2: Illegal inode number while checking ext3 journal for /dev/sdc7

/dev/sdc7: ***** FILE SYSTEM WAS MODIFIED *****

/dev/sdc7: ********** WARNING: Filesystem still has errors **********

=================
fsck -b 6553600 /dev/sdc7
fsck from util-linux 2.24.2
e2fsck 1.42.8 (20-Jun-2013)
fsck.ext2: Attempt to read block from filesystem resulted in short read 
while trying to open /dev/sdc7
Could this be a zero-length partition?
=================
fsck -b 13376000 /dev/sdc7
fsck from util-linux 2.24.2
e2fsck 1.42.8 (20-Jun-2013)
Superblock has an invalid journal (inode 8).
Clear<y>? no
fsck.ext2: Illegal inode number while checking ext3 journal for /dev/sdc7

/dev/sdc7: ********** WARNING: Filesystem still has errors **********

=================
fsck -b 13391872 /dev/sdc7
fsck from util-linux 2.24.2
e2fsck 1.42.8 (20-Jun-2013)
Superblock has an invalid journal (inode 8).
Clear<y>? no
fsck.ext2: Illegal inode number while checking ext3 journal for /dev/sdc7

/dev/sdc7: ********** WARNING: Filesystem still has errors **********

=================
fsck -b 13407744 /dev/sdc7
fsck from util-linux 2.24.2
e2fsck 1.42.8 (20-Jun-2013)
Superblock has an invalid journal (inode 8).
Clear<y>? no
fsck.ext2: Illegal inode number while checking ext3 journal for /dev/sdc7

/dev/sdc7: ********** WARNING: Filesystem still has errors **********

=================
fsck -b 13423616 /dev/sdc7
fsck from util-linux 2.24.2
e2fsck 1.42.8 (20-Jun-2013)
Superblock has an invalid journal (inode 8).
Clear<y>? no
fsck.ext2: Illegal inode number while checking ext3 journal for /dev/sdc7

/dev/sdc7: ********** WARNING: Filesystem still has errors **********

=================
fsck -b 13439488 /dev/sdc7
fsck from util-linux 2.24.2
e2fsck 1.42.8 (20-Jun-2013)
Superblock has an invalid journal (inode 8).
Clear<y>? no
fsck.ext2: Illegal inode number while checking ext3 journal for /dev/sdc7

/dev/sdc7: ********** WARNING: Filesystem still has errors **********

=================

So, of the possible sb's above, which one looks promising?