On Mon, Jul 01, 2019 at 02:43:14PM +0200, Geert Uytterhoeven wrote: > Hi Ted, > > Despite this fix having been applied upstream, the kernel prints from > time to time: > > EXT4-fs (sda1): error count since last fsck: 5 > EXT4-fs (sda1): initial error at time 1557931133: > ext4_get_branch:171: inode 1980: block 27550 > EXT4-fs (sda1): last error at time 1558114349: > ext4_get_branch:171: inode 1980: block 27550 > > This happens even after a manual run of "e2fsck -f" (while it's mounted > RO), which reports a clean file system. What's happening is this. When the kernel detects a corruption, newer kernels will set these superblock fields: __le32 s_error_count; /* number of fs errors */ __le32 s_first_error_time; /* first time an error happened */ __le32 s_first_error_ino; /* inode involved in first error */ __le64 s_first_error_block; /* block involved of first error */ __u8 s_first_error_func[32] __nonstring; /* function where the error happened */ __le32 s_first_error_line; /* line number where error happened */ __le32 s_last_error_time; /* most recent time of an error */ __le32 s_last_error_ino; /* inode involved in last error */ __le32 s_last_error_line; /* line number where error happened */ __le64 s_last_error_block; /* block involved of last error */ __u8 s_last_error_func[32] __nonstring; /* function where the error happened */ When newer versions of e2fsck *fix* the corruption, it will clear these fields. It's basically a safety check because *way* too many ext4 users run with errors=continue (aka, "don't worry, be happy" mode), and so this is a poke in the system logs that the file system is corrupted, and they, really, *REALLY* should fix it before they lose (more) data. > The inode and block numbers match the numbers printed due to the > previous bug. You can also see when the last file system error was detected via: % date -d @1558114349 Fri 17 May 2019 01:32:29 PM EDT > Do you have an idea what's wrong? > Note that I run a very old version of e2fsck (from a decade ago). ... and that's the problem. If you're going to be using newer versions of the kernel, you really should be using newer versions of e2fsprogs. There have been a lot of bug fixes in the last 10 years, and some of them can be data corruption bugs.... - Ted
