Ubuntu
util-linux package

broken ext3 filesystem

Asked by Wimpy

hi

i have a rather annoying problem with an ext3 fs that will not mount any more
error msgs are like corrupted/missing journal/superblock

i tried mounting with another superblock but that still didnt work

i can still mount the fs as ext2 but i would like to repair it / reconvert it to ext3
and fsck (or e2fsck) simply refuses

anyone any suggestions?

tx

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Flabdablet (flabdablet) said : 		#1

If that were mine, I'd be *backing everything up*, then using

tune2fs -O ^has_journal /path/to/device

to get rid of the existing journal (perhaps adding the -f flag to force the issue if tune2fs didn't cooperate) and then using

tune2fs -j /path/to/device

to build a new one. See the tune2fs man page for details.

Revision history for this message
Wimpy (wimhuysm-yahoo) said : 		#2

no getting rid of journal even with force option

think i'll just dos format the partition and then make a new ext3 restoring my backup

tx for the help

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Sam Flory (samflory) said : 		#3

The fact that it is doing this indicates you've may have disk issues. Most likley your disk is in the process of eat itself. Copy everything you care about off the hard drive. Then do the following

1)boot from the ubuntu cdrom

2)start a badblocks run on the hard drive. "badblocks (your hard drive)"

You can also use smartcl to check the drive's own logs, and run internal tests, but I'm not sure that smartmontools is on the cdrom, or installed by default.
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Smartmontools

You might want to run the extended test:
1)smartctl -t long (your hard drive)
2)wait for the time listed
3)smartctl -l selftest (your hard drive), and smartctl -H (your hard drive)

Revision history for this message
Wimpy (wimhuysm-yahoo) said : 		#4

tx for the response - i had smartmontools it seems and will runthe test

as it is a fairly new drive i doubt however that it is a disk problem
i could 'reformat' the partition to ext3 w/o problems

due to a mistake while trying to restore the data i have to reinstall tho ( never use rm -r /usr logged in as root)

just for completeness here's the actual errors i got running fsck :

Attempt to read from filesystem resulted in short read for block xxx / journal superblock /while checking journal

=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART Self-test log structure revision number 1
Num Test_Description Status Remaining LifeTime(hours) LBA
_of_first_error
# 1 Short offline Completed without error 00% 7437 -
# 2 Short offline Completed without error 00% 3451 -

=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED

ah well - a fresh instal always tastes so much better :)