Assertion failure in journal_bmap() at journal.c:636: "ret != 0"
 

On boot, I get the following error, and the machine freezes:

Assertion failure in journal_bmap() at journal.c:636: "ret != 0"

Strangely, it happens during startup of Sendmail. Does this mean my hard drive is bad? I am running Red Hat 7.1.

Thank you for any hints.

Youssef Eldakar
Bibliotheca Alexandrina

An assertion is a mechanism used to debug a program. In short, when such an error message is shown, it means that something got really wrong (the message should be never shown). For a user, the only solution is to upgrade your kernel. I highly recommend it to you, especially if you still have a kernel you installed with RH 7.1.

i think i've seen that error on a corrupted reiserfs
a couple of years ago. a lot of the older kernels can
corrupt reiserfs filesystems. you may have to mount
the drive with a rescue disk, copy everything off to a
different drive, and reformat and restore, assuming
it's reiserfs. the reiserfs fsck doesn't work too well.