[SOLVED] EXT3-fserror: inode bitmap for group 4 not in group

tinyTux · 05-25-2011, 12:43 PM

Hi. I've been tasked with fixing a Red Hat system that dies with a kernel panic during the boot stage:

Code:

EXT3-fserror (dev sda1): ext3_check_descriptors: Inode bitmap for group 4 not in group (block 67239937)!
EXT3-fs: group descriptors corrupted!
mount: error mounting /dev/root on /sysroot as ext3: Invalid argument

I would appreciate any advice on the proper way to fix this. I can boot into a Rescue CD, but I'm a bit out of my element because I don't use EXT3 myself, and I've never had to repair a corrupted file system before.

T3RM1NVT0R · 05-25-2011, 02:05 PM

Hi there,

Can you please let us know if you have done any modification to the file system that lead to this situation or all of a sudden it just happened.

I would also like to know which RedHat version this system is running on.

Also you can give try to following steps:

1. Boot in single user mode.
2. Do cat /etc/fstab to see which are the partitions that are mounting during boot up. Especially /dev/sda1 which I am quite sure will be mounting on /

If you have trouble getting in single user mode then I would suggest you to go to grub prompt (you can go by hitting C at the time it prompts you to select kernel in which you want to boot). Then you can give a try to the steps mentioned in the following document: http://magazine.redhat.com/2007/03/2...boot-problems/

tinyTux · 05-25-2011, 04:22 PM

Thank you for your assistance. However, I used fsck.ext3 (from a Gentoo install disk) on the drive, which repaired the file system, and now everything appears to be back to normal. I am running a SMART long self-test on the drive to see if perhaps it needs to be replaced.

T3RM1NVT0R · 05-25-2011, 04:31 PM

Great!!! Good to hear that it has been resolved.