<div dir="ltr"> You can try using the secondary superblock: <div>fsck -b 32768 /dev/whatever </div><div> </div><div>This presumes that you're using 4K blocks in the filesystem. you can get a (more accurate) list of available </div><div>secondary superblocks with </div><div> </div><div>mkfs -n -{other options used to make the filesystem} /dev/whatever</div><div> </div><div> </div></div><div class="gmail_extra"> <div class="gmail_quote">On Thu, Nov 19, 2015 at 7:06 PM, Boylan, Ross <<a href="mailto:Ross.Boylan@ucsf.edu" target="_blank">Ross.Boylan@ucsf.edu</a>> wrote: <blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">I tried the "just run e2fsck", but it reduced the filesystem to almost nothing. Before there were nearly 700G of files; after there were 70G.* Also, the overall filesystem size shrunk to under 300G. I ran resize2fs to get the space back, but of course that didn't get the files back. This seems like an awful lot of damage from losing a total of 8,192 bytes out of ~700G. Maybe the first block of zeros caused the recovery to decide it had reached the end? The logical volume got about 64GB from the first, presumably OK, virtual disk. The holes in the file occur around 174GB into the 2nd virtual hard disk. I've still got copies from before e2fsck, and I'm still interested in recovering them (lots of recorded shows on them). Sorry about the top-posting; my mail client doesn't provide good way to do otherwise. Ross *I had expected only to lose the newer files, but a lot of the program files seem to be gone too. startx doesn't exist, for example. From: Boylan, Ross Sent: Thursday, November 19, 2015 1:13 PM To: Stephen Samuel Cc: <a href="mailto:Ext3-users@redhat.com">Ext3-users@redhat.com</a> Subject: RE: recovering corrupt file system <div class="HOEnZb"><div class="h5"> Thanks for the pointer. Turning to my other bad file system, I could use some help interpreting e2fsck. I have the source and have been looking at various web resources, so I suppose I could figure this out eventually. Actually, maybe I should ask a simpler question: should I just run e2fck, accepting its recommendations, and live with the results? No matter what I do I don't think I can recover any more information. Here's a little diagram: media01/root # LVM logical volume on which the ext4 filesystem resides VM's sda, sdb, various partitions # physical volumes making up the media01VG ------ virtual machine above here --- --- physical machine/ host below here ------------------- media01b.vdi # host file backing virtual disk sdb # note I have made a spare copy of media01b.vdi. # The file backing virtual sda had no hardware problems. ## various more layers here physical disk The physical disk at the bottom is failing. I used (g)ddrescue to copy as much of the media01b.vdi file as I could; the file is about 700G, and there were 2 chunks of 0x1000 bytes that could not be recovered and are now 0 filled. The basic structure of the virtual disks appears intact: the partition tables are still there and the logical volumes can still be assembled. If it's worth getting into the details, here's what e2fsck, run inside another VM that has the problems disks temporarily inserted says. What do the individual block bitmap differences mean? I'm guessing + and minus indicate whether the block was found in the scan only or in the file system tables on disk one, but I don't know which. And what do the numbers mean? Offsets in bytes? sectors? relative to ?? root@wheezy02:~# e2fsck -vn /dev/media01-vg/root e2fsck 1.42.12 (29-Aug-2014) One or more block group descriptor checksums are invalid. Fix? no Group descriptor 465 checksum is 0x5e7a, should be 0xa22b. IGNORED. Group descriptor 482 checksum is 0x69eb, should be 0x73a5. IGNORED. Group descriptor 485 checksum is 0xbd9b, should be 0x21c9. IGNORED. Group descriptor 496 checksum is 0xe550, should be 0x9a62. IGNORED. Group descriptor 508 checksum is 0xf4d0, should be 0x2466. IGNORED. /dev/media01-vg/root contains a file system with errors, check forced. Pass 1: Checking inodes, blocks, and sizes Pass 2: Checking directory structure Pass 3: Checking directory connectivity Pass 4: Checking reference counts Pass 5: Checking group summary information Block bitmap differences: +15243264 +(15511418--15511423) +(15511488--15511551) +(15523264--15523327) +(15812608--15813174) -(15813349--15813503) -(15813632--158\ 14054) +(15814656--15815176) +(15815680--15816191) -(15816505--15816703) -(15823872--15824895) -(15850505--15851519) -(15852544--15853567) -(15896583--15898623) +\ (16029735--16029759) +(16029786--16029823) +(16029852--16029855) +(16029884--16031743) -(16261152--16261954) -(16263740--16263743) -16459791 +(16459795--16459799)\ -(16459808--16459814) -(16459825--16459839) -(16460000--16460026) -(16460288--16460799) +(16668689--16670719) +(17210175--17211391) +17498112 -(17498624--1749913\ 5) -(17499262--17500159) +17534976 -(17536000--17537023) -(17953505--17954815) +(18026714--18028543) +(18031327--18032639) -(18032653--18034687) +(18062252--18063\ 359) +(18655232--18657173) -(19314688--19316735) -(19331072--19333119) -19406880 -25174048 -(41954376--41955015) -(42999849--42999850) -(42999852--42999859) -(429\ 99861--42999862) -(43524128--43546654) -(45621280--45625870) -(45637632--45641520) -46669856 -(48242720--48246756) -(67436544--67446783) Fix? no Free blocks count wrong for group #473 (0, counted=134). Fix? no ## quite a few more Free blocks wrong messages Free blocks count wrong (48434540, counted=48384585). Fix? no Inode bitmap differences: -4849670 Fix? no Free inodes count wrong for group #592 (8187, counted=8186). Fix? no Free inodes count wrong (16811016, counted=16811015). Fix? no Padding at end of block bitmap is not set. Fix? no /dev/media01-vg/root: ********** WARNING: Filesystem still has errors ********** 56312 inodes used (0.33%, out of 16867328) 91 non-contiguous files (0.2%) 53 non-contiguous directories (0.1%) # of inodes with ind/dind/tind blocks: 0/0/0 Extent depth histogram: 51385/43 19012244 blocks used (28.19%, out of 67446784) 0 bad blocks 14 large files 46167 regular files 5101 directories 12 character device files 25 block device files 0 fifos </div></div><div class="HOEnZb"><div class="h5">From: <a href="mailto:darkonc@gmail.com">darkonc@gmail.com</a> [<a href="mailto:darkonc@gmail.com">darkonc@gmail.com</a>] on behalf of Stephen Samuel [<a href="mailto:samuel@bcgreen.com">samuel@bcgreen.com</a>] Sent: Thursday, November 19, 2015 8:00 AM To: Boylan, Ross Cc: <a href="mailto:Ext3-users@redhat.com">Ext3-users@redhat.com</a> Subject: Re: recovering corrupt file system well, the next place to go, if fsck isn't enough would be to to try debugfs(1) man debugfs. On Wed, Nov 18, 2015 at 8:39 PM, Boylan, Ross <<a href="mailto:Ross.Boylan@ucsf.edu">Ross.Boylan@ucsf.edu</a>> wrote: I guess some of the trouble was that the virtual disk was mounted read-only at the VM level. When I mounted read/write I was able to do fsck, which gave messages about replaying the logs and a couple messages about changing the inode counts (sorry, don't have the exact words). Then I ran fsck -f, which didn't report any problems. Then I mounted it, and everything seems OK. I'm still interested in the general question about how to diagnose and recover from file system errors, since I have another virtual machine that was backed by a failing real disk. ________________________________________ From: Boylan, Ross Sent: Wednesday, November 18, 2015 4:35 PM To: <a href="mailto:Ext3-users@redhat.com">Ext3-users@redhat.com</a> Subject: recovering corrupt file system Any recommendations for tools to diagnose and recover problems on an ext4 file system? In particular: root@jessie01:~# mount -o ro /dev/markov02/root /mnt/markov02 mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/mapper/markov02-root, missing codepage or helper program, or other error In some cases useful info is found in syslog - try dmesg | tail or so. and e2fsck says root@jessie01:~# e2fsck /dev/markov02/root e2fsck 1.42.12 (29-Aug-2014) /dev/markov02/root: recovering journal Superblock needs_recovery flag is clear, but journal has data. markov02/root is an LVM volume, built on partitions from 2 disks in a virtual machine. The initial symptom was that the VM the disks were in originally would only get as far as busybox when it started. However, I think the filesystem was OK even after that, since it was visible in busybox and in another VM. I think virt-manager might have overwritten on of the disks because I left "allocate entire disk now" checked when I moved one of the disks between machines. I'm making copies of the virtual disks now. Ross Boylan _______________________________________________ Ext3-users mailing list <a href="mailto:Ext3-users@redhat.com">Ext3-users@redhat.com</a> <a href="https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/ext3-users" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/ext3-users</a> -- Stephen Samuel <a href="http://www.bcgreen.com" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">http://www.bcgreen.com</a> Software, like love, <a href="tel:778-861-7641" value="+17788617641">778-861-7641</a> grows when you give it away </div></div></blockquote></div> -- <div class="gmail_signature">Stephen Samuel <a href="http://www.bcgreen.com" target="_blank">http://www.bcgreen.com</a> Software, like love, 778-861-7641 grows when you give it away</div> </div>