Upon bootup of my SuSE Linux workstation, init reported that the root filesystem was corrupt and dropped me into single-user mode to repair the problem. I know my way around Linux systems, but suffice to say I'm not a professional sysadmin so I'm not too handy at hazard duty.
So I remounted / read-write and ran e2fsck on my ext3 root filesystem. Yes, it's safe to run e2fsck on ext3fs according to the man page. I ran e2fsck because the remount command suggested as much; other than that I wouldn't know how to "repair" the filesystem.
Anyhow, it ran through a series of passes, reporting "duplicate / bad blocks" (I really wish it differentiated between the two). It also changed the file type of a number of files (from type 2 to type 1, which I assume is from directory to regular file). The reason I think this is the case is because /root is now a regular file. :Q
To estimate the extent of the problem, there were probably on the order of 100 duplicate / bad blocks, and 20 file type errors, along with other assorted errors. I would characterize this as serious, but not fatal problems, at least judging by the fact I am now using the system instead of feverishly backing up.
Unfortunately, I don't see any record of fsck in /var/log/messages. There are a bunch of files now sitting in /lost+found if I want to start digging to see what data was impacted.
Actually, I was dropped into single-user mode to repair / twice consecutively. Apparently, some of the fixes in the first fsck were no good, and likely reversed in the second fsck. If it happened (or happens) a third time, I would definitely have shut down the system and started a contingency plan. Furthermore, /home is a separate filesystem and losing / alone would not be catastrophic. I also have no reason to believe there is a physical disk failure that jeopardizes all filesystems, but device failure is always a possibility. I have not handled or moved the drive recently. Nor is there any history of mishandling or bad blocks.
So my questions are basically where do I go from here?
Any thoughts & analysis are appreciated.
So I remounted / read-write and ran e2fsck on my ext3 root filesystem. Yes, it's safe to run e2fsck on ext3fs according to the man page. I ran e2fsck because the remount command suggested as much; other than that I wouldn't know how to "repair" the filesystem.
Anyhow, it ran through a series of passes, reporting "duplicate / bad blocks" (I really wish it differentiated between the two). It also changed the file type of a number of files (from type 2 to type 1, which I assume is from directory to regular file). The reason I think this is the case is because /root is now a regular file. :Q
To estimate the extent of the problem, there were probably on the order of 100 duplicate / bad blocks, and 20 file type errors, along with other assorted errors. I would characterize this as serious, but not fatal problems, at least judging by the fact I am now using the system instead of feverishly backing up.
Actually, I was dropped into single-user mode to repair / twice consecutively. Apparently, some of the fixes in the first fsck were no good, and likely reversed in the second fsck. If it happened (or happens) a third time, I would definitely have shut down the system and started a contingency plan. Furthermore, /home is a separate filesystem and losing / alone would not be catastrophic. I also have no reason to believe there is a physical disk failure that jeopardizes all filesystems, but device failure is always a possibility. I have not handled or moved the drive recently. Nor is there any history of mishandling or bad blocks.
So my questions are basically where do I go from here?
- Are there any other filesystem repair utilities for ext3fs?
- Besides the drive manufacturer's diagnostic utility, how can I investigate drive failure? S.M.A.R.T. is enabled, but appears fairly useless for desktop PCs (in theory, Linux should report any impending drive failures if support is activated).
- How do you guys like to backup your workstation? I generally backup /home only once a year to CD-R.
I've never been a fan of tape, but even DVD-R would not be a convenient general system backup media for a 80 GB drive.
- I always shutdown Linux sanely, but the system does rarely lockup (I can't recall a reason why, but for example I recently was playing with Nvidia video drivers). Is the combination of rare system reboots (without clean unmounts) and the short fsck for ext3fs one cause for this problem unexpectedly occurring, and the volume of errors?
Any thoughts & analysis are appreciated.