Ext3 users - Oct 2001 - What was wrong with this sequence?

I thought I understood things, but I guess not.  I recently configured a new
system for a colleague as follows:

    1. Redhat 7.1 install Dell Inspiron 8100 - three partitions on 30G - /,
       /boot, swap
    2. Boot up
    3. configure, make, make install of linux-2.4.12-ac3 (with approriate lilo
       changes) lilo (but no reboot until 8)
    4. rpm -U mount-2.11g-5.i386.rpm (from rawhide)
    5. configure, make install e2fsprogs-1.25
    6. tune2fs -j /dev/hda1 (boot) /dev/hda6 (/)
    7. substitute ext3 for ext2 for bot filesystems in /etc/fstab
    8. reboot
    9. 2.4.12-ac3 kernel boots, but fsck detects massive problems and we end
       up with a ton of stuff in /lost+found and enough stuff seems maybe
       broken that we think we should start from scratch

So, what's wrong here?  I thought this was a simple 9 step procedure that
any
8 year old could manage while playing Diablo II at the same time.

Hi,

On Thu, Oct 18, 2001 at 08:17:23PM -0400, John Ruttenberg wrote:
> I thought I understood things, but I guess not.  I recently configured a
new
> system for a colleague as follows:
> 
>     1. Redhat 7.1 install Dell Inspiron 8100 - three partitions on 30G - /,
>        /boot, swap
>     2. Boot up
>     3. configure, make, make install of linux-2.4.12-ac3 (with approriate
lilo
>        changes) lilo (but no reboot until 8)
>     4. rpm -U mount-2.11g-5.i386.rpm (from rawhide)
>     5. configure, make install e2fsprogs-1.25
>     6. tune2fs -j /dev/hda1 (boot) /dev/hda6 (/)
>     7. substitute ext3 for ext2 for bot filesystems in /etc/fstab
>     8. reboot
>     9. 2.4.12-ac3 kernel boots, but fsck detects massive problems and we
end
>        up with a ton of stuff in /lost+found and enough stuff seems maybe
>        broken that we think we should start from scratch
Why did fsck get invoked?  It will always tell you why it is starting
a full scan (eg. "Too many mounts since last check, fsck forced" or
similar messages). 

After a normal controlled reboot, the full fsck should not be
triggered, unless the previous (ext2) filesystem had already detected
some filesystem errors and recorded the need for a fsck in the
filesystem's superblock.

In the scenario above, the ext3 code will only have been active for a
tiny amount of time during the boot which ran fsck, and if the fsck is
on the root fs, then ext3 will still have been readonly at that point.
So the corruption was either disk corruption while the fs was ext2, or
bad data being read by the 2.4.12-ac3 kernel off the disk.

Either way, this sounds much more like an ide-level problem than a
fs-level one.  So far all of the similar problem reports I've seen
have been with certain IBM 20GB laptop disks, in three cases with an
inspiron 8100 involved.  What disk is your system using?  The more
examples I get, the more we may be able to narrow down the
drivers/disks/kernels which are causing the problem.

For now all I can suggest is that the evidence I've got indicates it's
not a filesystem problem, so ext3 shouldn't be any more risk than
ext2.  However, it _might_ be something which is triggered more by
some versions of the ide drivers than others, so the kernel version
might still be a factor.

Cheers,
 Stephen