Filesystem bug horror!

Question

I believe I have fallen victim to a bad ext4 filesystem bug. I woke up this morning to boot my computer and realized it stalled with a bunch of graphical errors. It reported an I/O error on sda1 repeatedly.

This is a 500GB Scorpio blue HDD (about a month old) that has been running perfectly until shortly after installing Ubuntu 12.10 from my disk (fresh install). I first tried to fix the complaint of a bad or corrupt grub configuration from the recovery menu but it didn't do anything. So then I popped in my Ubuntu ready installer (USB flashdrive) and I was unable to format the filesystem, it had an output of asking drive if cache failed or something and eventually said that the filesystem couldn't be created.

I went ahead and popped in my Windows 7 DVD and it formatted it without any issues, and I am now standing on Ubuntu 12.04 in working order.

NOTE: Ubuntu 12.10 had all of its updates installed and had various apps like VLC, SMPlayer, WINE, and various other typical things. I know this isn't exactly a "Question" but launchpad is a bit confusing to use and never seems to get appointed correctly for me. So I'd rather seek out to a community I know is active and alert.

As far as I know the ext4 file system bug only happens in some revisions of the 3.6 kernel. Ubuntu 12.10 uses kernel 3.5, unless you installed 3.6 somehow what you are facing has nothing to do with the fs reported (and long fixed) bug. — Bruno Pereira, Nov 16 '12 at 13:48
This question should instead be filed as a bug report, and as such is off-topic, thanks! Instructions on filing a bug report are here. — Jorge Castro, Nov 16 '12 at 13:58

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered Nov 16 '12 at 13:49

It reported an I/O error on sda1 repeatedly.

Then it's not a filesystem issue, but a failing drive (or I/O controller). Run diagnostics on your drive (SMART reporting) from a live CD to verify this. Create backups a.s.a.p. (mount read-only and copy files somewhere else).

Filesystem bug horror!

1 Answers1