I'm having trouble with files getting corrupted on the LFS partition.
I'm using FC5 as host.

/dev/hda1 through /dev/hda8 are partitiions used by FC5.
So I to use for LFS. (/dev/hda9 is just spare unused space on my harddisk)

/dev/hda9 is not in /etc/fstab so I mount it manually each time with and when I'm done for the day I unmount /dev/hda9 with Things seem to be going ok, but I find that the md5sums change for some of the files I copied to /mnt/lfs
This will usually happen after a reboot (even if I unmount /dev/hda9 before I shutdown). The files whose md5sums no longer match are corrupt (bunzip2 told me so).

Is there something wrong with the way I'm mounting and unmounting that's causing this problem? Or is there something else that could be causing this problem?

the mk2fs command is flawless (you are making a ext3 fs).

mount is good too (-v for verbose).

I don't see what might be causing the problem. unless it's an external harddrive that you unplug before umounting...

You could try using a different filesystem... right now I believe you're using journaling ext2 (ext3 for all practical purposes...)? Personally I'd consider using reiserfs but I doubt FC5 will let you without a little kernel work and installing reiserfsutils.

-j means journaling, therefore creating a journaled (ext3) filesystem. (by the gentoo handbook I read not too long ago anyway).

I don't expect changing filesystem to do much of a difference, but if the ext3 module for FC5 is currupted, or act unconventionally, then I'd say changing FS would be a good idea

Thanks for the replies. I was actually hoping that I had done something stupid so that it would be easy to fix.

The harddisk is not external. It is a standard IDE drive and the only harddrive in the system at that.

I tried ext2 first (which is what the LFS book uses) but switched to ext3 hoping that it would fix the problem. It obviously doesn't ;(

FC5 uses ext3 as the "default" FS, so I would think (hope) that they would have the ext3 module working somewhat flawlessly. I'll try to switch to another FS just for that partition to see if it helps.

Just a thought.

In chapter 2.3 there is a note about distros using custom features and it suggests using the standard e2fsprogs to create the filesystem. I don't know whether it is custom features that is causing your problem. But in any case if your mke2fs is dodgy, it may be worth a try.

cd /tmp
tar -xjvf /path/to/sources/e2fsprogs-1.38.tar.bz2
cd e2fsprogs-1.38
mkdir -v build
cd build
../configure
make #note that we intentionally don't 'make install' here!
./misc/mke2fs -jv /dev/<xxx>
cd /tmp
rm -rfv e2fsprogs-1.38

This is taken from the LFS-dev, LFS 6.1.1 uses e2fsprogs-1.37 so adjust as appropriate.

Hope it helps

Ah, yes. Doesn't FC use SELinux? The LFS book warns about custom features.

run "debugfs -R feature /dev/hda9" and if you get anything listed other than dir_index, filetype, large_file, resize_inode and/or sparse_super, you'll need to compile a fresh copy of e2fsprogs.

http://fedora.jp/datapool/fedora-doc...html#id2684310

the link tells how to disable selinux, with a warning to it.