FreeBSD is too filesystem errors sensitive

Konrad Heuer kheuer2 at gwdg.de
Tue Dec 8 12:32:16 UTC 2009


On Tue, 8 Dec 2009, Erik Trulsson wrote:

> On Tue, Dec 08, 2009 at 02:09:03PM +0300, cronfy wrote:
>>
>>>>>>  panics like 'freeing free block' or 'ffs_valloc: dup alloc'
>>>>
>>>> Is there a way to say "Dear kernel, don't panic, I'am holding your
>>>> hand, keep working please-please-please?" If so, can it lead to
>>>> complete filesystem corruption indeed or it is not so serious?
>>>
>>> Afaik you can't do this. And you shouldn't do if it'd be possible. The
>>> file system errors you mention above should not happen under any
>>> normal circumstances. They may happen after a crash caused by other
>>> reasons but should get repaired by fsck. The kernel cannot continue
>>> with such errors because the whole file system metadata cannot be
>>> trusted anymore until repaired.
>>>
>> Thanks.
>>
>> What I can definitely state is that after reboot nothing will get any
>> better. I will have same filesystem with same errors + new errors that
>> appeared because soft-updates were not synced, and I will have fsck
>> running in background. I'd prefer to just start fsck in background,
>> skipping that annoying reboot phase ;-) Am I willing strange?
>
> Background fsck can only handle a few, very specific, filsystem problems.
> (Basically situations where blocks are marked as being in use, even though
> they are not really used by anything.  Softupdates is supposed to guarantee
> that those are the only types of filesystem errors that can occur, but in
> reality that guarantee does not always hold.)
>
> If you have other instances of filesystem corruption (which includes
> everything which can trigger a kernel panic) you need to use a foreground
> fsck to fix it.

That's true. You should go down to single user mode by entering "shutdown 
now", unmount your filesystems ("umount -a -t ufs") and check your 
filesystem by "fsck -y". Please read "man fsck" before since implicitly 
answering all questions with yes by "-y" may cause loss of data !!!

(To tell the truth: You probably have to do so anyway.)

> Personally I would recommend not using background fsck at all unless you
> know exactly what you are doing and why.

Best regards

Konrad Heuer
GWDG, Am Fassberg, 37077 Goettingen, Germany, kheuer2 at gwdg.de



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