I have a large volume (2+TB) that's run off of a RAID cabinet. RAID hardware appears to be fine with no errors. Recently the date to to run FSCK has been tripped and it ran automatically. However it always aborts near the end with the following error message: "memory allocation failed while retrying to read bitmaps".
Here are the commands I've run and received that error:
e2fsck -pCv /dev/sdb1
fsck -C -t ext3 -a /dev/sdb1

Both return the same result. Is there any known way to alleviate this error? To getthe machine up and running I know I can use tune2fs to reset the time on the superblock however I'd be living with errors in my data.

OS - Fedora 5

Thanks

check out this thread - it might solve your problem.
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...bitmap-443208/

Way late but thanks for the help. I can confirm that adding RAM fixed this problem. I went from 1GB to 3GB and the FSCK eventually finished after needing to fix errors.

wolf-r1 Fedora 5 that is SO past it's End Of Life
for a server i would install CentOS and get ride of the unsupported fedora 5 -- no updates in the last 4 years .

I know it is. It's been running production for that long. If I had my choice I'd replace it post haste. Unfortunately that will have to wait.