bad inode number followed by ext3_abort and remount readonly
David Shaw
dshaw at jabberwocky.com
Wed Jun 15 02:26:52 UTC 2005
On Tue, Jun 14, 2005 at 07:19:23PM -0400, Andreas Dilger wrote:
> On Jun 14, 2005 17:14 -0400, David Shaw wrote:
> > Jun 13 13:58:16 n202 kernel: EXT3-fs error (device sda5): ext3_get_inode_block: bad inode number: 9
> >
> > This particular example is a SATA disk, but it has happened to a
> > regular old IDE disk as well. It is always the root partition. The
> > bad inode number varies (but is always either 3 or 9). There are no
> > other errors about the disk in the log.
>
> The "bad inode number" check is only for inodes inside the "reserved inode"
> area, namely inum < 12. The only commonly used (=valid) inode numbers in
> this range are the root inode (=2) and the journal inode (=8), so I suspect
> you are getting single-bit memory errors in bit 1, or if the controller
> is the same that would also be viewed with suspicion. It is very likely
> that you are getting other single-bit errors elsewhere but they are harder
> to notice.
This is an interesting idea. Is there any simple way this sort of bit
flip problem could happen outside of the hardware? I've had this
happen on 4 different machines from 3 different vendors, 3 SATA, and 1
IDE. It seems almost impossible that it's a memory or controller
error.
David
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