Total system crash after emerge --sync [XFS corruption]

kEiNsTeiN · Guru Joined: 29 Apr 2005 Posts: 361 Location: Germany

Hi! I dont believe my problem is portage related, so I'm posting it here.

After emerge --sync updated the Portage Cache (--metadata does the same AFAIK), it brakes at 100%, doing a Traceback. In the ~5th line of the traceback, it tries to save the error to /var/log/emerge.log and fail with an input/output error.
After that, everything I click crashes. Basic commands like "tail" or "cat" give me an "command not found" error, double-tabbing shows only about 10 executable programs left to work with. When I try to shutdown X or switch to a console, the whole screen gets messed up with a lot of colors, kind of like a damaged divx-video, and the system freezes (no reaction to anything).

I feel like using windows... unexplainable crashes are not the linux way, usually

I am using XFS, maybe that's an issue.

sageman · Posted: Tue Aug 15, 2006 6:55 pm Post subject:

There is a known issue with XFS and the 2.6.17 kernel, basically, that it borks the system by corrupting directories. See: http://oss.sgi.com/projects/xfs/faq.html#dir2

Downgrade to 2.6.16 ASAP.
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Headrush · Posted: Tue Aug 15, 2006 7:04 pm Post subject:

sageman · Posted: Tue Aug 15, 2006 7:11 pm Post subject:

Nope, all 2.6.17. They are stable. It's an XFS issue, not a kernel issue. The XFS dudes screwed it up. There are often times modules and such that don't work so great in so-called stable kernels. The kernel is stable, just not all the modules, it seems.

Should be fixed in 2.6.17-r7, according to the XFS dudes. You could get vanilla-sources-2.6.17.7 to have it fixed.
_________________
Carlton Stedman
Gentoo Metalheads on Last.fm: http://www.last.fm/group/Gentoo+Metalheads

limn · l33t Joined: 13 May 2005 Posts: 997

According to the web page for 2.6.17-beyond2.2, it has the patch for the xfs problem, as does gentoo-sources-2.6.17-r4.

Of course, it is possilble that there were other issues that were missed.

kEiNsTeiN · Guru Joined: 29 Apr 2005 Posts: 361 Location: Germany

I could also upgrade to 2.6.18-mm... but there's the USB problem the mm-sources have with my computer (1.1 devices dont work)...
So.... downgrade neccessary?
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