Debian Stable, crash experience: is there something else than EXT3?
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Debian Stable, crash experience: is there something else than EXT3?
Hi,
I am using Debian Stable since 1.5 years, and I am surprised It already occured 3 partition EXT3 big crashes (loss of big amount of data). Since I have been fervent user of windows, & this never happened with NTFS after 5 years due to regular chkdsk. Is there any other partition type better than this EXT3 for Linux ?
I think it s due to tune2fs that does not check else than / - mounted partitions.
I am using Debian Stable since 1.5 years, and I am surprised It already occured 3 partition EXT3 big crashes (loss of big amount of data). Since I have been fervent user of windows, & this never happened with NTFS after 5 years due to regular chkdsk. Is there any other partition type better than this EXT3 for Linux ?
I think it s due to tune2fs that does not check else than / - mounted partitions.
btw I just had a major NTFS problem over the weekend. Had to reformat due to lack of default repair tools!
Why are you using tune2fs? Is the journaling of ext3 not good enough? What happens when you just resort back to mounting your ext3 partitions as ext2 (thus without journaling enabled?). This is possible, right? Or am I missing something else here?
I can hardly imagine that another file system is going to make much of a difference. But what do you mean exactly by "crash"? Do partitions fail to mount? Do they suddenly become inaccessible while you are using them? I had issues of my own a while ago when one of my partitions would suddenly become unusable while it was being copied to. It turned out to be a simple matter of replacing a SATA cable. Problem solved.
Going on 5 years with my current system and never had an issue with EXT3.. I did however have a drive that started to fail, but since I was running smartmontools it notified me the drive was deteriorating early enough I was able to transfer my system to a new HD and not loose any data..
You might be having other hardware issues that are causing your problem, I highly doubt it's the file system. I agree with Jay73, you need to look for other issues that are more likely causing the problem.
Going on 5 years with my current system and never had an issue with EXT3.. I did however have a drive that started to fail, but since I was running smartmontools it notified me the drive was deteriorating early enough I was able to transfer my system to a new HD and not loose any data..
You might be having other hardware issues that are causing your problem, I highly doubt it's the file system. I agree with Jay73, you need to look for other issues that are more likely causing the problem.
I tried using the tune2fs -c 2
Quote:
Originally Posted by makuyl View Post
Post "tune2fs -l /dev/sda1", /etc/e2fsck.conf and /etc/fstab.
Code:
Filesystem created: Wed Dec 13 22:19:08 2006
Last mount time: Sat May 10 12:05:02 2008
Last write time: Sat May 10 12:05:02 2008
Mount count: 19
Maximum mount count: 2
Last checked: Sun May 4 09:23:02 2008
Check interval: 15552000 (6 months)
tune2fs only fix the / first partition, and do not give interest to fixing others
--
I installed just now :
Code:
apt-get install smartmontools smart-notifier
I try to understand how it works ... and how to set up to my box
Going on 5 years with my current system and never had an issue with EXT3.. I did however have a drive that started to fail, but since I was running smartmontools it notified me the drive was deteriorating early enough I was able to transfer my system to a new HD and not loose any data..
You might be having other hardware issues that are causing your problem, I highly doubt it's the file system. I agree with Jay73, you need to look for other issues that are more likely causing the problem.
If you have a quick command so that smartmontools fix, check and verify permanetntly a pc that runs all the time, no reboot, with 3 disks, please do not hesitate !
Going on 5 years with my current system and never had an issue with EXT3.. I did however have a drive that started to fail, but since I was running smartmontools it notified me the drive was deteriorating early enough I was able to transfer my system to a new HD and not loose any data..
You might be having other hardware issues that are causing your problem, I highly doubt it's the file system. I agree with Jay73, you need to look for other issues that are more likely causing the problem.
smartmon tools is for testing and monitoring your hard drives for failure or pre-fail conditions. if your drive is generating errors of any kind the system can notify you before they become serious enough that you loose data.
Could always check the man page for more info...
Code:
EXAMPLES
smartctl -a /dev/hda
Print all SMART information for drive /dev/hda (Primary Master).
smartctl -s off /dev/hdd
Disable SMART on drive /dev/hdd (Secondary Slave).
smartctl --smart=on --offlineauto=on --saveauto=on /dev/hda
Enable SMART on drive /dev/hda, enable automatic offline testing every
four hours, and enable autosaving of SMART Attributes. This is a good
start-up line for your system´s init files. You can issue this command
on a running system.
smartctl -t long /dev/hdc
Begin an extended self-test of drive /dev/hdc. You can issue this com‐
mand on a running system. The results can be seen in the self-test log
visible with the ´-l selftest´ option after it has completed.
smartctl -s on -t offline /dev/hda
Enable SMART on the disk, and begin an immediate offline test of drive
/dev/hda. You can issue this command on a running system. The results
are only used to update the SMART Attributes, visible with the ´-A´
option. If any device errors occur, they are logged to the SMART error
log, which can be seen with the ´-l error´ option.
smartctl -A -v 9,minutes /dev/hda
Shows the vendor Attributes, when the disk stores its power-on time
internally in minutes rather than hours.
smartctl -q errorsonly -H -l selftest /dev/hda
Produces output only if the device returns failing SMART status, or if
some of the logged self-tests ended with errors.
smartctl -q silent -a /dev/hda
Examine all SMART data for device /dev/hda, but produce no printed out‐
put. You must use the exit status (the $? shell variable) to learn if
any Attributes are out of bound, if the SMART status is failing, if
there are errors recorded in the self-test log, or if there are errors
recorded in the disk error log.
smartctl -a -d 3ware,0 /dev/sda
Examine all SMART data for the first ATA disk connected to a 3ware RAID
controller card.
Code:
REFERENCES FOR SMART
An introductory article about smartmontools is Monitoring Hard Disks
with SMART, by Bruce Allen, Linux Journal, January 2004, pages 74-77.
This is http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=6983 online.
If you would like to understand better how SMART works, and what it
does, a good place to start is with Sections 4.8 and 6.54 of the first
volume of the ´AT Attachment with Packet Interface-7´ (ATA/ATAPI-7)
specification. This documents the SMART functionality which the smart‐
montools utilities provide access to. You can find Revision 4b of this
document at http://www.t13.org/docs2004/d1532v1r4b-ATA-ATAPI-7.pdf .
Earlier and later versions of this Specification are available from the
T13 web site http://www.t13.org/ .
The functioning of SMART was originally defined by the SFF-8035i revi‐
sion 2 and the SFF-8055i revision 1.4 specifications. These are publi‐
cations of the Small Form Factors (SFF) Committee. Links to these doc‐
uments may be found in the References section of the smartmontools home
page at http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net/ .
as for your current problem, I do not know the resolution to your issue.
smartmon tools is for testing and monitoring your hard drives for failure or pre-fail conditions. if your drive is generating errors of any kind the system can notify you before they become serious enough that you loose data.
Thank you very much I will study this during the 2 months.I will take time to make it, since I am not specialist in informatic. I will temporally solve the problem with once a week setup at boot in the /etc/rc2.d/ a script to fsck.ext3 my harddisks.
I would do temporally:
/etc/rc2.d/SXXmyfscksaver :
Code:
#!/bin/sh
for each in "$(cat /etc/fstab | grep ext3 | awk ' { print $1 } ')" ; do
fsck.ext3 $each
done
Would you know which values of XX should I use for the disk fixer to be done at every boots, before the linux mounts all ?
tune2fs does not do other harddisks else than /. That's a very bad choice, since newbies can get peaced of debian (like I did, since 2 years ago I didnt know that the disks were very never checked by the debian stable box) I got 238 times mounted without any single fsck.ext3, imagine !
tune2fs does not do other harddisks else than /. That's a very bad choice, since newbies can get peaced of debian (like I did, since 2 years ago I didnt know that the disks were very never checked by the debian stable box) I got 238 times mounted without any single fsck.ext3, imagine !
tune2fs doesn't check or fix anything. It is for _tuning_ purposes and as it doesn't know anything about the purpose of the underlying filesystem or it's mountpoint it's clearly able to change any ext2/3 partition.
in order to have your partitions checked at boot time, place a file called "forcefsck" in / and reboot. which partitions are checked then is determined by the second last column in /etc/fstab.
please read the manual pages of e2fsck, fstab and tune2fs.
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