Re: [gentoo-user] "deleted inode referenced"

[William Kenworthy <billk@iinet.net.au>]

On Sat, 2009-11-07 at 12:05 -0500, Philip Webb wrote:
> In the course of trying to get X to work on my ASUS 1005HA netbook,
> I had to power the machine off several times.  In the course of this,
> some damage seems to have occurred to the file system.
> There are files in  /var  /tmp  which I can't remove:
> the msg is "EXT2-fs error: ext2_lookup: deleted inode referenced: 16388".
> 
> I got round the problem by creating new dirs, copying everything else
> & renaming the dirs, but that leaves me with  /bad1 , which I can't remove
> as it contains a reference to an inode which no longer exists.
> NB this is not the more common problem of a bad file name,
> which cb dealt with simply by removing the inode (which still exists).
> 
> Can anyone help ?
> 
> BTW is Ext2 the best fs for this machine ?  Might Ext3 or Ext4 be better ?
> -- I use Reiserfs on my desktop machines.
> 


Have you tried fsk on it? - "man e2fsck"

The last question is a bit of a "how long is a piece of string"
question.

My personal experience is ext2 is only for those occasions you dont
value the data at all :)

ext3 isnt much better unless you use "data=journal" to get some basic
protection.

But instead of fiddling with such (deleted disparaging comment) file
systems, use reiserfs though this may need a complete reinstall .
Updates are still occuring to the reiserfs code in the kernel, so
reiserfs is not abandoned by any means.

ext4, reiserfs4, btfs and the like are too new for me, though I like the
look of btfs.

I have read some interesting articles in the past about the ext
filesystem devs and their inside track on rieserfs in the kernel and the
war of words that surrounds it.  My personal experience with ext2/3
supports the view that the ext filesystems didn't fairly win the
argument based on performance and data protection.  Enough said.

Unfortunately, filesystems are a very complex and emotive subject with
no one choice fits all solution.  My suggestion is you have lost data
and have problems with what you are using ... time to move on, try ext3
(with "data=journal") next - because you can fix ext2 with e2fsck
(though probably lose some data in the process, but ...), convert to
ext3 then mount with "data=journal" without having to reinstall.  Google
for the commands needed ... worked for me.

Have fun :)
BillK