Ext3 emergency recovery

[Keld Jørn Simonsen]

On Tue, Aug 29, 2006 at 08:16:23AM -0400, Adam Atlas wrote:
> I have a damaged Ext3 filesystem which fsck has not been able to  
> recover. If I try to mount it, I get a message like this in dmesg:
> 
>   EXT3-fs error (device sda1): ext3_free_blocks_sb: bit already  
> cleared for block 2370866
> 
> If I try fsck on it, I get a series of messages like this:
> 
>   Inode bitmap for group 0 is not in group.  (block 0)
>   Relocate<y>?
> 
> Up to group 95. Some say "SEVERE DATA LOSS POSSIBLE." I backed up the  
> filesystem and tried answering yes to all of them; it ended up just  
> erasing the whole thing. So I have a backup with the data intact but  
> with a broken filesystem. (Unfortunately I don't have a backup from  
> when this filesystem was working.) Is there anything I can do now to  
> repair the filesystem, or at least recover some data?

I have made a repair extension to debugfs, available at

http://std.dkuug.dk/keld/readme-salvage.html

Best regards
keld