Inode 196617 has imagic flag set

[Keith Roberts]

On Sun, 5 Dec 2010, Ted Ts'o wrote:

> To: Keith Roberts <keith at karsites.net>
> From: Ted Ts'o <tytso at mit.edu>
> Subject: Re: Inode 196617 has imagic flag set
> 
> On Sun, Dec 05, 2010 at 10:10:38PM +0000, Keith Roberts wrote:
>> This is stopping my new Centos 5.5 installation from booting.
>>
>> I have dropped into maintainance mode and run e2fsck without getting
>> any errors. I used the -c option, and no bad blocks were found.
>
> That error "Inode ... has imagic flag set" is an e2fsck error.  Do you
> have more than one file system on your system?  Maybe you checked the
> one file system, and the error was on another file system.

Absolutely spon on Ted!

I did have a USB stick plugged in, to boot my Kickstart file 
from. I also added another partition to the USB drive, also 
with a partition label called 'websites'. So I could upload 
my websites to my hosting provider from my laptop.

Maybe e2fsck was getting confused at having two partitions 
with the same partition label on the system?

So I renamed the partition on my USB drive, to my-websites.

+++

I have found it now Ted.

I'm on my laptop, and have run e2fskck on the USB drive.

Here is the output:

[root at karsites ~]# e2label /dev/sdb2
my-websites
[root at karsites ~]# e2fsck -vf -Cd /dev/sdb2
e2fsck 1.39 (29-May-2006)
Pass 1: Checking inodes, blocks, and sizes
Deleted inode 196610 has zero dtime.  Fix<y>? no

Inode 196617 is in use, but has dtime set.  Fix<y>? no

Inode 196617 has imagic flag set.  Clear<y>? no

Inode 196618 is in use, but has dtime set.  Fix<y>? no

Inode 196618 has imagic flag set.  Clear<y>? no

Inode 196619 is in use, but has dtime set.  Fix<y>? no

Inode 196619 has imagic flag set.  Clear<y>? no

Inode 196620 is in use, but has dtime set.  Fix<y>? no

Inode 196620 has imagic flag set.  Clear<y>?

So it looks like e2fsck was checking the USB drive at 
bootup, and because it inadvertently had the same partition 
lable name, 'websites'.

I thought it was my main HDD I was installing Centos onto 
that had the errors.

Whew!

That's cool, because this is a brand new 500GB hard drive.

I shall make sure in future, that there are no conflicts 
with my partition label names - especially with removable 
devices like USB drives.

Thanks for all the help.

Kind Regards,

Keith Roberts

PS Are there any PDF docs that would give me an overview of 
the ext3 FS, and how it works?

> That error very often means that part of your inode table has gotten
> corrupted, since that flag should never get set during normal
> operation.  (It was implemented for AFS file servers.)
>
> 	    	    		    	     - Ted
>

-- 
In theory, theory and practice are the same;
in practice they are not.

This email was sent from my laptop with Centos 5.5