Filesystem corruption, data loss on usb drives, and more problems with FC2

[James Wilkinson]

Fernando Perez wrote:
> Clean, custom (over FTP) install of Fedora2 Final.
> 
> System: Dell Optiplex GX-270 (Pentium 4, 2.8GHz, 120 GB Hard disk, 1 GB RAM,
> NVidia GeForce 4MX video card, Dell 2000FP LCD, correctly identified and
> working at 1600x1200 resolution).  This machine was previously running
> Fedora1, but a clean install (not an upgrade) was done.
> 
> <snip>
> This system has Hyperthreading activated in the BIOS.  Fedora installed both
> an SMP and a UP kernel, I have done tests with both.  All critical bugs 
> listed below have been reproduced with both kernels.
> 
> I am running the stock kernels from the Fedora install, along with the Xorg
> 'nv' NVidia driver, which works ok (albeit with no 3d acceleration).  So no
> issues can be attributed to third-party kernel modules.
> 
> Root filesystem corruption - CRITICAL, DATA LOSS
> ------------------------------------------------
> 
> / became 'read-only' after a very large build (rebuilding a large .src.rpm, 
> ~ 3 hours of very cpu-intensive C++ compilation).  I have never seen this 
> before. Obviously once the system thought that '/' was read-only, shit hit 
> the fan pretty quickly.

I know you've said that this system ran FC1, but have you checked the
memory on the system (try memtest86)?

One alternative is that your hard drive is dying. Although you gave lots
of specs (thank you), you didn't mention the HD manufacturer. You may
want to see if they have any diagnostic disks available (the IBM /
Hitachi ones are good, for example).

You probably don't want to invalidate your warranty, but trying to
reproduce with a different hard disk and different memory would be
interesting. It smells like dodgy hardware to me.

I realise that this sounds very much like the software guys blaming the
hardware (and the hardware guys will blame the software, given a
chance) but I'd be surprised if we hadn't heard more of this if it is
Linux.

Is there any chance you can reproduce this with a kernel.org kernel?
If so, I'd try the Linux Kernel Mailing List.

I'm sorry you're having so many problems.

For the record, yes, I see the DPMS problem too, although I haven't
looked into it yet.

James.

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