Topic: Corrupted file system without crash

[Michael Herger]

I always get file system problems even without any crash of the machine. I can't reboot my box without keyboard/screen just because I always have to run fsck to fix fs problems. After only a few hours I will again have those problems.

Importing a few thousend records into MySQL crashes the DB server because there's inconsistent data. Sometimes even perl scripts dump core because auf fs troubles. After a fsck everything's fine again.

What's wrong with my box? I even tried slowing it all down (disable DMA access etc.). Nothing helped. Who can help me? And how can I safely run fsck from within a ssh session (not locally logged on the machine)?

Regards,

Michael

[Nathan Fowler]

Often, data corruption is a sign of bad RAM.  You could also have a failing drive, but I would check the RAM first.  If you have someone with a SIMM/DIMM tester (CompUSA has some of them) you can have them perform a memory check on the RAM.  Also, I'd try swapping it out with some known good memory.

You may also want to run a surface scan on that drive.

Hope this helped,
Nathan

[Michael Herger]

As I'm living in Switzerland CompUSA isn't an option . But thanks for the hint! I replaced the installed memory with another one. And for the first time I succeeded in importing some 900'000 records (about 200MB of data) into MySQL - previous attempts left corrupted tables and indexes. So I'm pretty optimistic this change will finally help me.

Thank you very much!

Michael