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

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Message-ID: <20180730152532.GS21725@thunk.org>
Date:   Mon, 30 Jul 2018 11:25:32 -0400
From:   "Theodore Y. Ts'o" <tytso@....edu>
To:     Patrick Dung <mpatdung@...il.com>
Cc:     linux-ext4@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: inode 7 frequently have problem when I run fsck

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.

Regards,

						- Ted