Subject: Re: ext2fs corruptions and other things ...

From: [email-masked]
Date: Sun, 19 Jul 1998 02:34:21 +0200

On Sun, Jul 19, 1998 at 12:53:14AM +0200, Michael Engel wrote:

> sorry for all the delays and everything ... it were two very busy weeks :-(.
> Following Ralfs proposal, how about a MIPS hackers' BBQ now that it looks
> like the eternal rain in Germany has stopped ;) ?

Clear sky for the first time since ...  can't remember ...

> Back to hacking ... I just got 2.1.100 running on my RM200 and noticed
> two things:
> 
> - Automatic IRQ detection of ISA cards doesn't work. Does it work on any
>   other MIPS machines ? Setting a fixed irq line makes my NE2000 and IDE
>   controller work in the ISA slots. 

I remember getting strange messages from the interrupt probing code on the
RM200C but aside that IDE was working just fine.  It's very, very long
since I last tried some other isa-ish periphery in the machine.

Quite some time Thomas commited a patch to arch/mips/kernel/irc.c which was
actually supposed to fix the probing problem, maybe he can comment.

> - NFS root works fine, I'm up and running multi user with the old rootfs-0.01 -
>   fine ! However, I suspect quite some problems with these binaries ... 

Since the release of root-0.01 (little endian) I had to break the binary
compatibility in two important points.  These binaries aren't any longer
supposed to be really useable.

> - Whenever I try to untar rootfs-0.01.tar.gz on my IDE hard disk, I get
>   a fs corrution (usually after creating the second directory):
> 
>   EXT2-fs error (device 03:00):
>   ext2_readdir: bad entry in directory #2: 
>   rec_len is smaller than minimal - offset=896, inode=0, rec_len=0, 
>   name_len=0
> 
>   [Note that I'm using the raw disk /dev/hda as fdisk doesn't seem to 
>    create correct partition information]

I've used a newer build of fdisk (< 1 year :-) and there is no problem at
all with partitioning.  IDE is prefectly reliable for me.

We actually had more reports about problems with filesystems on /dev/sdx
on Indys.  There seems to be a clear pattern of a bug, but for now I
classify that one as lower priority.

>   Has anyone seen similar effects on MIPS machines ?
>   
> Off to read the intel 82596 ethernet controller docs ...

Btw, Linux supports two 82596 based Ethernet adapters.

  Ralf

---

From: Thomas Bogendoerfer <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 19 Jul 1998 11:00:32 +0200

> actually supposed to fix the probing problem, maybe he can comment.

I couldn't even remember, that I did something in that area:-) I've looked
up in CVS, what I did there, and as far as I remeber it fixed autoprobing
for me (my NE2000 gets the interrupt via autoprobing). Maybe it's time
to check whether it still works.

> classify that one as lower priority.

I've never got any filesystem corruption on my Olli. And I've crashed it
pretty often, when doing the XF68_FBDev stuff.

Thomas.

-- 
See, you not only have to be a good coder to create a system like Linux,
you have to be a sneaky bastard too ;-)
                   [Linus Torvalds in <[email-masked]>]