[CentOS] Corrupt file systems

Thu Jul 27 21:23:09 UTC 2006
Paul Heinlein <heinlein at madboa.com>

On Thu, 27 Jul 2006, Russell Butturini wrote:

> Hello all:
>
>
>
> My company builds Linux based web content filters using CentOS 4.3 
> as the base.  We always apply updates to the new machines from the 
> default repositories before deployment.  Recently, the last two 
> CentOS machines we built on Dell Dimension 1100s have failed, and 
> the root file system seem to be getting corrupted.  An e2fsck tries 
> to recover the journal, but never repairs the machine enough to 
> completely boot up.  This only seems to be happening on the 
> Dimension 1100s, as we have several other machines built with the 
> same kernel version and software running on it that have not failed. 
> The machines are Celeron-Ds, 2.4-2.8 Ghz, with either 256 or 512 MB 
> of RAM and IDE hard disks.

We've got a handul of 1100s (actually, the 1100n model, mostly because 
I love getting a printed copy of the GPL from Dell :-), with CentOS 
4.3. No troubles to report.

Can you get to a recovery shell? If so, does 'smartctl -a /dev/hda' 
provide any clues?

-- Paul Heinlein <heinlein at madboa.com>