On Wed, 18 Oct 2006 17:25:34 -0400
Rudolph Pienaar <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> dijo:

> I have been running gentoo AMD-64 on my R3000Z from the get go (about two 
> years now). About four months ago I began stumbling across filesystem 
> problems.
> 
> In my case, I suspect hardware - which in fact is what I think might be 
> happening to you.
> 
> First, what filesystem are you using? You mentioned Ubuntu so I'm going to 
> guess ext3?

Yes, ext3. During the upgrade to Dapper from Breezy I did a clean
install and attempted Reiserfs. However, Ubuntu doesn't like to install
on Reiserfs and it borked. Since I don't need any of the features for
which Reiserfs is touted as being better, I have stuck to ext3.

> On Wednesday 18 October 2006 15:16, John Jason Jordan wrote:
> > In contrast, I have used NTFS on
> > Windows NT/2000 computers since I built my first NT computer in
> > October, 1993. NTFS has *never* given me a corrupted filesystem.
> 
> That doesn't really mean anything. I have used reiserfs on various laptops, 
> servers, and workstations and never experienced corrupted filesystems.
> 
> A more pertinent question would be, "Have you used NTFS on this particular 
> hardware?"

Ah! A superb question sir! Because if the answer were yes, and if NTFS
never had a problem on this hardware, we'd know it was a filesystem
bug. 

Regrettably, the answer is no. The first thing I did after taking
delivery of this laptop (brand new from HP), was to wipe the hard disk
and install Linux. It has never run Windows of any variety. Hence we
cannot rule out hardware. Except that the problem occurred with the
original hard disk and the replacement, so it's safe to assume it's not
the hard disk. Could be whatever electronics the controller depends on,
though. Also could be whatever driver Linux is using.

> Anyway, a discussion of NTFS vs ext3 vs reiserfs vs whatever is probably 
> off-topic, but I think it's safe to say that from a technology perspective 
> they are all, on average, equally good.

I didn't mean to get into an OS war. I only meant that if there is an
issue with ext3 ... wait, I'm not sure why I said that. Henceforth in
this thread, let's drop this issue. Please pretend I never said it.

> > A couple months ago, in order to gain better speed, I swapped out the
> > original 60 GB hard disk that came with this computer for a new
> > ultra-fast 80 GB hard disk. However, the filesystem corruption problems
> > continue. In other words, the problem is evidently not in the hard
> > disk. It may be in the controller or its driver, however.

> A-ha! You might have hit on something there. It might very well be the 
> controller. FWIW, a faster hard drive in a laptop is usually more "fragile", 
> too. In otherwords, if you experience issues that you suspect are hardware 
> related, swapping out for a slower drive is usually better.

But the problem occurred with the original hard drive as well. Hence I
conclude that the hard disk is not the problem. 

> > So I am posting this hoping that someone here has a clue what might be
> > going on. Has anyone else experienced problems like this? Does anyone
> > suspect (as I do) that the missing folders and the filesystem
> > corruption are related?
> 
> Quite likely they are. Try keeping an eye on your system logs (as root, "tail 
> -f /var/log/messages") in a console. See if you can re-create the filesystem 
> weirdness (say popping in a CD and browse in a file browser) and check if any 
> noise appears in the logs, in particular any errors about fileseek/access 
> on /dev/hdc (for example). If you do, it's a good indication of h/w issues... 
> (or of course, the CD might be damaged, but I guess that's a h/w issue, too). 
> Try using other CDs. Try also doing a "find /" as root - this will list every 
> single file on your harddrive and is also a quick-and-dirty way to see if any 
> files are sitting on top of bad clusters/nodes/whatever.

I have saved your suggestion "tail -f /var/log/messages" and will check
it out after doing some CD mounts and browser accesses.

As for "find," that I have already tried. The results were weird. For
example, a folder that does not appear in Nautilus, or Konqueror, Xfe,
Thunar, Endeavour2 or Krusader *does* appear when I do a Find in
Nautilus. That is, if I know the name of a file that I think is in the
"missing" folder, and I search for it with Nautilus, the file appears
in the search window, complete with its path, and the path shows the
missing folder. Furthermore, I can drag/copy the files from the Find window
to another folder, and thereafter they appear fine in the other folder.
That is just plain weird. I'd suspect Nautilus, but I get exactly the
same results from the other file browsers. Weirder still, the command
line yields the same results. So it's not the GUI. It's something
deeper.

Thanks for your observations and suggestions. Still working on it!
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