Strange ext3 corruption

joekrahn · #1 13th November 2006, 06:30 PM

I have an ext3 partition with many files that have had their content and attributes cross-linked with other files. There are no error messages in system logs, and the disk SMART checks out OK. Very strange; ext3 is normally very stable.

I'm going to run disk SMART tests and MemTest86. I will post a follow-up if I figure out what happend.

joekrahn · #2 13th November 2006, 11:19 PM

Memtest and disk SMART still look good. fsck gave more than 1000 files cross-linked, with multiply-claimed blocks and about the same number of lost inodes. It seems that those files all got incorrectly mis-linked, with their original contents intact but unlinked. These files are throughout the filesystem. Could a corrupt ext3 journal cause such havoc? Or is it not possible for a journal to generate an invalid FS state?

A re-install seems in order, but I don't like not knowing why the FS got trashed.