Re: 2.2.1 mkfs.ext2 out of memory

Khimenko Victor (khim@sch57.msk.ru)
Thu, 18 Feb 1999 22:50:14 +0300 (MSK)

In <3.0.32.19990218093634.0170e350@popd.cnmnetwork.com> Jon P. deOng (jdeong@cnmnetwork.com) wrote:
> Hi,
> I'm running a pII 400 with 256Mb of ram with a vanilla 2.2.1 kernel
> Im trying to create a raid5 array with 4 9gig scsi seagate cheetah drives
> connected to the external adapter of an adaptec 2940uw controller. My os
> drive is also a 9gig scsi cheetah on the internal ultra scsi adapter. I
> have no scsi2 devices at all. I have verified proper termination and turned
> off the auto term in the adaptec bios.
> Now I have no problems with mkraid, mdadd, or mdrun. All of these raid tools
> report no errors. The problem comes when i try to format /dev/md0
> my syntax is
> mkfs.ext2 /dev/md0
> mkfs gets almost halfway through writing the inode tables and then i get
> this output

> Writing inode tabels: 1969/3254
> Out of Memory for mkfs.ext2
> Killed
> and i am taken back to my command prompt
> I have tried this several times with the same result. I have even went into
> the scsi utilities and verified the media on each drive. Has anyone else
> seen this problem, or am I just incompetent?:)

I've seen this problem few times when there are not enough REAL memory:
8MiB RAM/540MiB HDD, 16MiB RAM/1GiB HDD, 64MiB RAM/10GiB HDD, etc.
In ALL kernel types: 1.0.x (yes, it happened for me back with 1.0.9 kernel
and appropriate Slackware release :-) 1.2.x and 1.3.x, 2.0.x and 2.2.x...
It's VERY rare and happened for me ALWAYS when I tried to install Linux on
new comp (so NO debug tools was avalable on boot floppies :-)

Since it happended for you on full blown system you could try to trace it.
May be Alan could help you and this FIVE YEAR OLD BUG (AT LEAST FIVE YEAR OLD!)
will be fixed ?

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