Very big files getting made for no reason at all...

chrismortimore · 2006-09-24 12:16:35

I had this problem for a while, and posted about it on the Gentoo forums (when I still used Gentoo), and I'm curious to see if he Arch forums have any other ideas.

Basically, my desktop is creating very very big files for absolutely no reason. Example: My "documents" folder on my laptop and my desktop are synced. The laptop version of a PDF file was 135KB. The desktop version (for some unknown reason) was 18TB. Now, given my desktops /home partition is 100GB, that makes me think something is horribly wrong somewhere... An e2fsck fixes it, but I don't like having to boot the installer CD to do this every time it happens, I'd rather I could just trust it to work. The large files do not appear on the drives connected to the desktops ITE 8212 IDE controller.

The current setup: The drive is a 160GB Maxtor plugged into a VIA VT8251 IDE controller. The hardware is not malfunctioning, as it does work fine in Windows. My thinking is it is probably an issue with the VIA IDE driver. The filesystem is ext3.

The large files are not contained to a particular partition, they can pop up anywhere on the drive (but they don't, as the bulk of the system is mounted "ro" unless I need to actually change something).

The problem is only in the desktop. The laptop is running the same kernel version (with an Intel 80821DBM IDE controller) and also running ext3, and does not suffer the same problems.

Next time it happens, I'll post the output of dmesg (unless I can find it on the Gentoo forums first...).

Anyone got any ideas?

Cheers.

EDIT: Found it:

chrismortimore wrote:

Aug  6 11:20:51 marbles EXT3-fs error (device dm-3): ext3_free_branches: Read failure, inode=8881856, block=97460224
Aug  6 11:20:51 marbles EXT3-fs error (device dm-3) in ext3_reserve_inode_write: Journal has aborted
Aug  6 11:20:51 marbles EXT3-fs error (device dm-3) in ext3_truncate: Journal has aborted
Aug  6 11:20:51 marbles EXT3-fs error (device dm-3) in ext3_reserve_inode_write: Journal has aborted
Aug  6 11:20:51 marbles EXT3-fs error (device dm-3) in ext3_orphan_del: Journal has aborted
Aug  6 11:20:51 marbles EXT3-fs error (device dm-3) in ext3_reserve_inode_write: Journal has aborted
Aug  6 11:20:51 marbles EXT3-fs error (device dm-3) in ext3_delete_inode: Journal has aborted
Aug  6 11:20:53 marbles ext3_abort called.
Aug  6 11:20:53 marbles EXT3-fs error (device dm-3): ext3_journal_start_sb: Detected aborted journal
Aug  6 11:26:11 marbles EXT3-fs warning (device dm-3): ext3_clear_journal_err: Filesystem error recorded from previous mount: IO failure
Aug  6 11:26:11 marbles EXT3-fs warning (device dm-3): ext3_clear_journal_err: Marking fs in need of filesystem check.
Aug  6 11:26:11 marbles EXT3-fs warning: mounting fs with errors, running e2fsck is recommended
Aug  6 11:26:11 marbles EXT3 FS on dm-3, internal journal
Aug  6 11:26:11 marbles EXT3-fs: recovery complete.
Aug  6 11:26:11 marbles EXT3-fs: mounted filesystem with ordered data mode.

11:20:51 is when the file was deleted, 11:26:11 was when I unmounted and remounted /home by the way.

brain0 · 2006-09-24 16:41:58

chrismortimore wrote:

An e2fsck fixes it, but I don't like having to boot the installer CD to do this every time it happens, I'd rather I could just trust it to work.

You don't have to boot the installer. Just do

# touch /forcefsck

and reboot.

chrismortimore · 2006-09-24 19:44:26

brain0 wrote:

You don't have to boot the installer. Just do
# touch /forcefsck
and reboot.

That is OK, until the / partition gets the large file, because when it happens the filesystems are remounted "ro" automatically. Cheers for the suggestion anywho.

Arch Linux

#1 2006-09-24 12:16:35

Very big files getting made for no reason at all...

#2 2006-09-24 16:41:58

Re: Very big files getting made for no reason at all...

#3 2006-09-24 19:44:26

Re: Very big files getting made for no reason at all...

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