Re: Disk problems

["Michael B. Taylor" <mtaylor@mapleloop.rmt.utk.edu>]

On Tue, Nov 03, 1998 at 07:32:19AM -0500, Biciunas, Paul John wrote:
> Hello, all.
> 
> I installed Debian 2.0 (2.0.34) Greenbush distribution.
> My disks are 2 IDE drives, a 540M and 2.5G slave.
> 
> The partitions are (df output)
> /dev/hda1     99029   ... /
> /dev/hda3   348873   ... /home
> /dev/hdb1   495714   ... /var
> /dev/hdb2 1926659   ... /usr
> 
> I had problems making a kernel, but finally managed to build a bzImage.
> The kernel booted, and upon testing, realized that I needed to rebuild
> the kernel.
> That's when the fun started. The make failed, when it couldn't process 
> some .c files in /usr/src/linux/lib/ - "file" said they were MPEG files.
> 
> Firing up emacs, it complained about not being able to find
> /usr/local/share/emacs/...
> files, and sure enough, /usr/local/share was no longer a directory, but
> some .c file.
> 
> Running fsck was a nightmare.
> Instead, I rebooted from the installation cdrom, and repartitioned the
> disks, checked
> for bad blocks (passed), and started dselect. On Install, what I got was
> multiple
> 
> EXT_fs error (device 03:42): ext2_find_entry : bad entry in directory
> #8193 : rec_len
> is too small for name_len - offset 0, inode 538976288, rec_len=8224,
> name_len=8224
> 
> Is my disk toast? 

That would be my guess.  Unfortunately, it looks like the newer 2.5G
drive is the one going south.

To test this theory, unplug the data cable from the 2.5G and jumper the
540M as a solo master.  Reinstall from scratch, including repartitioning.
That way, you can be sure that you are not starting out with any corrupt
files.

I think, however, that IDE drives can fail in ways that induce errors
in drives mounted on the same controller, so it *could* be that the
540M is failing.  If the above does not clear up the problem, unplug the
540M, set up the 2.5G as solo master, and try again.

If the problem still presists, it is prolly a controller problem, or 
something I missed.

If you are not using the kernel-package for your kernel compiles, I suggest
you check it out.  It makes things much easier.  The documentation will
be in /usr/doc.

Mike