Mounting an external HDD fails each second time after xfs_repair

Hi all,

I use 14 partitions (one extended partition; partition table see below) on my new external 400GB HDD that is managed by LVM2 on Debian Sarge with a vanilla kernel 2.6.19.

The first time I mounted the HDD on my desktop everything worked fine and I was able to copy 71GB of data. I unmounted and exported the HDD and imported and mounted it on my laptop (commands see below) running Ubuntu Edgy. Fine, too, I was able to read the data. I exported again and imported again on my desktop. But now mounting fails with

mount: /dev/mm-extern/audiovideo: can't read superblock

/var/log/syslog prints:
[Output:
http://www.zvisionwelt.de/tmpdownloads/mount-failure-syslog.output]

The funny thing is that I just wanted to have a recent syslog print to post here and tried again to mount the HDD and now it works! [/var/log/syslog output:
http://www.zvisionwelt.de/tmpdownloads/mount-success-syslog.output]

I didn't change anything else after the mount failure mentioned above! BUT: Reading fails while I wanted to have a look at the files in lost+found.
[/var/log/syslog output:
http://www.zvisionwelt.de/tmpdownloads/read-failure-syslog.output]

Yesterday I used xfs_repair after the mount failure with the result that two directories were removed:

# xfs_repair /dev/mm-extern/audiovideo
[Output: http://www.zvisionwelt.de/tmpdownloads/xfs_repair.output]

Then mounting worked again. But this morning it failed again as I wrote above. I could repeat the scenario: xfs_repair -> mounting works -> unmount -> mounting again fails -> xfs_repair -> mounting works -> unmount -> mounting again fails -> waiting for about 90 minutes (without xfs_repair) it worked again. Strange ...

Looking for answers I found this message tonight:
<news:[email protected]> Citation from this message: "After [xfs_repair] the file system is mountable for one time again."

Any ideas what's going wrong here? I found
<http://oss.sgi.com/projects/xfs/faq.html#dir2>. But this should be fixed since 2.6.17.7.

Here is some more information:

Partition table:
http://www.zvisionwelt.de/tmpdownloads/partition-table.txt

The HDD has one volume group named "mm-extern". The logical volume is named "audiovideo".

fstab entry:
/dev/mm-extern/audiovideo /media/samsung xfs defaults,noatime 0

    0

# xfs_info /media/samsung/
meta-data=/media/samsung         isize=256    agcount=16,
agsize=6104384 blks
         =                       sectsz=512
data     =                       bsize=4096   blocks=97670144,
imaxpct=25
         =                       sunit=0      swidth=0 blks, unwritten=1
naming   =version 2              bsize=4096
log      =internal               bsize=4096   blocks=32768, version=1
         =                       sectsz=512   sunit=0 blks
realtime =none                   extsz=65536  blocks=0, rtextents=0

Importing and mounting of the external HDD:
vgscan
vgimport mm-extern
vgchange -a y /dev/mm-extern
mount /media/samsung

Exporting and unmounting:
umount /media/samsung
vgchange -a n /dev/mm-extern
vgexport mm-extern

# dpkg -l lvm\* | grep ^ii
ii  lvm-common     1.5.17         The Logical Volume Manager for
Linux (common
ii  lvm2           2.01.04-5      The Linux Logical Volume Manager
# dpkg -l xfsprogs | grep ^ii
ii  xfsprogs       2.6.20-1       Utilities for managing the XFS
filesystem

I successfully use xfs with LVM2 on an internal HDD.

Best,
Christoph

+++ Typografie-Regeln: http://zvisionwelt.de/downloads.html (1.6)

Christoph Bier schrieb am 10.01.2007 14:35:

[...]

Only files in lost+found seem to be affected. I successfully opened some others files.

[...]

+++ Typografie-Regeln: http://zvisionwelt.de/downloads.html (1.6)

These are not xfs errors, you have device problems:

Jan 10 11:43:21 localhost kernel: sd 0:0:0:0: SCSI error: return code = 0x00070000
Jan 10 11:43:21 localhost kernel: end_request: I/O error, dev sda, sector 234300481
Jan 10 11:43:22 localhost kernel: I/O error in filesystem ("dm-1") meta-data dev dm-1 block 0x17495339       ("xlog_bread") error 5 buf count 262144
Jan 10 11:43:22 localhost kernel: XFS: empty log check failed
Jan 10 11:43:22 localhost kernel: XFS: log mount/recovery failed: error 5
Jan 10 11:43:22 localhost kernel: XFS: log mount failed

XFS is responding -properly- to an I/O error from your disk.

-Eric

Eric Sandeen schrieb am 10.01.2007 16:21:

Hm. Ok, thanks for your answer!

Best,
Christoph

+++ Typografie-Regeln: http://zvisionwelt.de/downloads.html (1.6)

christoph.bier> Hi all, I use 14 partitions (one extended christoph.bier> partition; partition table see below) on my new christoph.bier> external 400GB HDD that is managed by LVM2 on christoph.bier> Debian Sarge with a vanilla kernel 2.6.19.

Fascinating setup :-).

We can of course assume, given the care with which you have designed your setup, and the astuteness of your choice to omit any details as to the hardware (what type of HD interface, what type of external bus, the bridge and the host adapter chipsets, the disk and the power supply ratings) that you have advisedly chosen the external disk for 100% reliable operation, as you have checked thoroughly that the power supply of the case is sufficient and that both chipsets (USB? FW?) are well known for being bug-free and reliable for use with the relevant GNU/Linux mass storage driver... :-)

christoph.bier> The first time I mounted the HDD on my desktop christoph.bier> everything worked fine [ ... ]

A typo here: you typed "worked fine" instead of "seemed to work fine".

Peter Grandi schrieb am 10.01.2007 23:39:

[...]

Yes, you can. But OT here.

Regards,
Christoph

+++ Typografie-Regeln: http://zvisionwelt.de/downloads.html (1.6)