Ext2 Problem

Matthew Lepper (lepper@cmu.edu)
Wed, 17 Apr 1996 14:34:32 -0400

I recently rebooted a machine, and every time it started to mount its
file systems, the screen filled with colorful character garbage, and
the machine rebooted (endlessly).

Once I got the machine up with boot/root disks, I found that I
could mount every partition except one (my root partition). Since
I needed to get the machine up a running (it's our router), I
just dumped the contents of the suspect partition to a file,
and rebuilt the root file system. A post-mortem revealed:

- running e2fsck on the file (which is a copy of the partition)
revealed no errors.
- dumping the file to a new partion on another machine, and mounting
the partition causes the same behavior.

This is a fairly normal Slackware 3.0 installation running kernel
1.2.13 (with ELF and aic7xxx patches).

I'm quite stumped by this behavior, and I will try a more recent
kernel soon.

I'd appreciate any help that the filesystem gurus can provide, and
I am willing to try any suggestions. A gzipped copy of the partition
can be made available (it's about 10 MB).

Thanks in advance.

Matthew
lepper@cmu.edu