Hi RedHat 7.2, ext3 on /, kernel 2.4.18p1. whilst updatedb was running, i had these messages appear... Jan 6 22:18:42 jaguar kernel: EXT3-fs error (device ide0(3,3)): ext3_readdir: bad entry in directory #147553: rec_len %% 4 != 0 - offset=0, inode=1651076143, rec_len=19527, name_len=85 Jan 6 22:18:42 jaguar kernel: EXT3-fs error (device ide0(3,3)): ext3_readdir: bad entry in directory #50619: rec_len is too small for name_len - offset=0, inode=574907, rec_len=12, name_len=9 Jan 6 22:18:43 jaguar kernel: EXT3-fs error (device ide0(3,3)): ext3_readdir: bad entry in directory #341627: rec_len is too small for name_len - offset=0, inode=865915, rec_len=12, name_len=9 i'm suspicious i have a hard disk error (it's a new laptop that's less than a month old) and i wouldn't mind proof! The fsck (boot prior to this one) was clean. The errors appeared after unpacking a new kernel source, and then updatedb ran (cronjob) Thanks, Matt