linux-ext4 - Re: inode 7 frequently have problem when I run fsck

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Date:   Mon, 6 Aug 2018 15:42:12 -0500
From:   Eric Sandeen <esandeen@...hat.com>
To:     "Theodore Y. Ts'o" <tytso@....edu>,
        Patrick Dung <mpatdung@...il.com>
Cc:     linux-ext4@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: inode 7 frequently have problem when I run fsck



On 7/30/18 10:25 AM, Theodore Y. Ts'o wrote:
> On Mon, Jul 30, 2018 at 12:44:46PM +0800, Patrick Dung wrote:
>> The problem usually appeared when I did not use the hard drive for a while.
>> It happened a few times in the past.
>>
>> When I perform fsck today, it does not appear.
>> I had checked the SATA hard drive with smartmontools. It passed the
>> long test and I did not found any problem.
>>
>> After searching the web. I found Cisco WebEX Node SPA have very
>> similar error message that I had encountered.
>> https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/interfaces_modules/shared_port_adapters/install_upgrade/ASR1000/asr_sip_spa_hw/ASRtrbl.pdf
>> Please check page 7-8 or search for "Inode 7" in the document.
> 
> I've looked at the Cisco documentation, and what you've cited appears
> to be an example of how to fix a corrupted file system.  It appears to
> me to be merely an example, not an acknowledgement this kind of
> corruption regularly happens on the Cisco WebEx device (if it were,
> customers would probably refuse to buy it, since it means a system
> administrator would be regularly needing to do this kind of manual
> intervention on what is *supposed* to be an appliance sort of device.)
> 
> In any case, I can't really tell you much more.  We do a lot of
> extensive regression testing, and this is not a corruption I've seen
> before.  A lot of people use ext4, and you are the first person who
> has reported this particular problem.
> 
> This is why I suspected that it might be a hardware problem.  It's
> possible it is a kernel bug, and it could be anything, from an ext4
> bug, to a device driver bug, to an LVM or MD or bcache bug if you are
> using any of those components.  You didn't report the kernel version
> to me, and you didn't tell me if this is a distro kernel.  If it is a
> distro kernel, I'd suggest reporting it to the distribution, since
> they might be able to tell you if anyone else with that distro kernel
> has reported a problem similar to yours.

FYI, Patrick reported it on the Fedora bugzilla with 

kernel: 4.17.3-200.fc28.x86_64
e2fsprogs-1.44.2-0.fc28.x86_64

Trolling around the RH bugzilla I do see other instances of a corrupt
resize inodes, but it was always in combination with large swath of corruption
surrounding it as well, i.e. in one case due to a faulty storage driver for an
SDXC card....

-Eric