[PLUG] Error reading block xxxx

Keith Lofstrom keithl at kl-ic.com
Tue Nov 7 05:47:10 UTC 2006


On Mon, Nov 06, 2006 at 05:05:09PM -0700, Richard C. Steffens wrote:
> We went away for a week, so I shut down all the hardware in the house.
> Upon our return, most of it started back up. My old 200 MHz machine
> running RH 7.0 reports a problem. After saying something to the effect
> that the filesystem hadn't been checked in a very long time (this
> machine ordinarily stays running) I got the following:
> 
> --------------------------------------------------------------------
> Error reading block 257756 (Attempt to read block from filesystem
> resulted in short read) while reading indirect blocks of inode 98117.
> NEC40GB: UNEXPECTED INCONSISTENCY; RUN fsck MANUALLY (i.e., without -a
> or -p options)
> --------------------------------------------------------------------

This is probably a flaw on the media surface that showed up over
your vacation.  If there are some marginal disk blocks that are
constantly being re-written on the disk, they may unwrite themselves
if the disk is idle long enough.  The fsck badblocks commands that
others talk about should fix it. 

However, you should be aware that leaving a machine on for a long
long time, then turning it off for a couple of weeks, then turning
it on, can sometimes uncover hardware failures.  For example, many
chips are covered with plastic, and can get very hot while running. 
This can cause the plastic to deform over time, opening up gaps. 
The hot chips tend to evaporate moisture in the gaps, but if the
room gets cool and damp over the turnoff time, moisture creeps into
the gaps in the chip plastic and causes failures.  The failures will
happen, someday, anyway.  They just tend to exhibit themselves
during the turn-on after an absence.  

The bottom line is, if you turn your machines off for a couple of
weeks here in the NorthWet, allow some time to repair them afterwards.
By all means, turn them off when you aren't using them, leaving them
on means they will fail sometime during use instead.  Just budget the
time for restores from backups or replacement of some hardware.  If
everything works, get some extra sleep!

Keith

-- 
Keith Lofstrom          keithl at keithl.com         Voice (503)-520-1993
KLIC --- Keith Lofstrom Integrated Circuits --- "Your Ideas in Silicon"
Design Contracting in Bipolar and CMOS - Analog, Digital, and Scan ICs



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