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Looks like general system flakiness to me -- RAM or motherboard. Basically, something is corrupting your filesystem meta-data. It is unclear whether the corruption is occurring in RAM (with the bad meta-data eventually getting flushed back to disk), or if the corruption is occurring during disk I/O.

I seriously doubt it is a kernel/driver bug, but I suppose anything is possible. Did you by chance update to a newer kernel around the time the corruptions started? Did you install any third-party device drivers (i.e. ones that didn't come from the Ubuntu repository)?

Just so we're clear here -- the problematic Ubuntu installation is the host OS, and you're hosting something else (or another instance of Ubuntu) in VMware, right? (I just realized that if you're dealing with VMs, I could easily be confused as to which system is actually giving you trouble.)

FWIW I've not been particularly thrilled with VMware on Ubuntu. Yes, you can make it work; but it seems to work reluctantly at best. I've been meaning to take VirtualBox for a test drive to see if it is any better...

Virtualbox just isn't very good compared to VMware in general. I am running VMware 6.0.3 in Ubuntu just fine. What troubles were you having?

As to the Ubuntu issue, I had this once where a drive acted flaky and just started to corrupt things. That drive still gave me issues later. I think it had to do with using windows and unbuntu on the same drive and then the mbr got hosed. As to you using kernel 2.6.24-20-generic, where did you get that from? I have 3 Ubuntu machines in my house and they are all as of today still using the 2.6.24-19-generic. I forget the last number it's like 30 or something if you check.

What filesystem are you using? Is it ReiserFS? If it's corrupting your files on your hard drive it might move next to the files in your mind. Let us know if you find yourself having thoughts of murdering your wife.




/no help.

My guess is that you have one of two problems:

1. Flaky hardware. Disks can fail with certain combinations of circumstances that may not occur with the diagnostics. Or you could have problems with the controller, CPU, or RAM. If you are overclocking, set it back to standard, and set the memory timings to safe values.

2. Bad partition settings. Long ago, I set a Windows 98 partition to the wrong type, and the block numbers wrapped around and Windows scribbled all over my Linux partition. Things get very strange when partitions overlap or extend past the end of the drive. Check your partition table.

atryus28 wrote:

Virtualbox just isn't very good compared to VMware in general.

That's disappointing.

I am running VMware 6.0.3 in Ubuntu just fine. What troubles were you having?

General issues getting it to install properly, and (once that was resolved) problems with the system clock being wonky (too fast/slow). VMware seems to have significant issues with any sort of power management which causes the clock speed of the host CPU to vary. Clock also sometimes runs fast/slow even on systems with PM disabled...

I have to check again but I got that taken care of and I didn't need to turn off my power management. I set something in the config file. I did this s few months ago and haven't bothered with it since because the issue was resolved. I found the answer in the vmware forums though.

When was the last time you tried with Ubuntu?

ssidbroadcast wrote:

What filesystem are you using? Is it ReiserFS? If it's corrupting your files on your hard drive it might move next to the files in your mind. Let us know if you find yourself having thoughts of murdering your wife.




/no help.

In the first two lines the OP stated:

axeman wrote:

I've already posted this on the Ubuntu forums, but haven't got a response, maybe some of the talented people here at TR can help.

Recently, I started to have trouble reading certain files on a 500gb ext3 partition I have mounted for storage/backup purposes...

atryus28 wrote:

I have to check again but I got that taken care of and I didn't need to turn off my power management. I set something in the config file. I did this s few months ago and haven't bothered with it since because the issue was resolved. I found the answer in the vmware forums though.

When was the last time you tried with Ubuntu?

Probably a couple, maybe three months ago.

I should add that this was VMware Server, not VMware Workstation.

I've been using kvm to develop my diskless stuff. It's limited in the hardware it supports in the guest, but it doesn't mess up the host. Getting the networking setup if you want to bridge it on to your LAN is a bit of a nuisance, but it does work reliably.

I don't have any ideas on the filesystem corruption though. I did see similar corruption a while ago on my work system, but that was running an old version of RHEL that had a buggy sata_nv driver and a kernel upgrade fixed it. All I can suggest is make sure you have all the latest updates installed and double check all the cables and connectors. ext3 is a pretty solid filesystem, the problem is far more likely to be in the controller driver or the hardware itself.

notfred wrote:

ext3 is a pretty solid filesystem, the problem is far more likely to be in the controller driver or the hardware itself.

I can vouch for this. At my day job, we have a prototype product where we are pretty abusive with ext3. It's an embedded app where the system is frequently power cycled without warning. I initially had some misgivings about using ext3 in this environment, but based on our experiences over the past few months, ext3 is pretty robust even when (mis)used in this manner.

I'd still stop short of recommending that it be used this way in a production product, but I am definitely impressed.

Just a question... does an **** perform a resize2fs as part of it's process? I'm just thinking that perhaps the meta-data is saying your ext3 is a certain size when it physically isn't... This could be a bit of a long shot I realize but it may not be such a bad idea to run a resize2fs.