[NTLUG:Discuss] missing ext3 filesystem

[Chris Cox]

Lance Simmons wrote:
> One of my filesystems won't mount.  
> 
>   $ mount -t ext3 /dev/hdg1 /hdg1
>   mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/hdg1,
>          missing codepage or other error
> 	 in some cases useful info is found in syslog - try
>          dmesg | tail  or so
> 
> dmesg didn't seem to turn up anything interesting.
> 
> running fsck.ext3 gives this:
> 
>   $ fsck.ext3 /dev/hdg1
>   e2fsck 1.39-WIP (31-Dec-2005)
>   Couldn't find ext2 superblock, trying backup blocks...
>   Superblock has an invalid ext3 journal (inode 8).
>   Clear<y>?
> 
> Yikes!  Is there a handy howto for how to recover ext3 filesystems with
> missing superblocks?  Is this a sign of a hard drive failure?  The
> filesystem was working fine for many months until yesterday, and I don't
> know of any problems with the hard drive.

Run badblocks on the device to see if there are badblocks.
I still believe there is a major bug in ext2 that has yet
to be uncovered.  I've seen too many ext3's do really
weird things (for me, at least fsck cleared things up).