[ILUG] puzzle of the day: RHEL has files seemingly undoing edits

[Justin Mason]

definitely sounds like time for an fsck.  I've seen files disappear and
reappear on an un-fscked ext3 filesystem with errors. (files, not
contents, though)

My work laptop has a built-in disk test in the BIOS, which successfully
identified a bad HD last week.  (I've already replaced it thanks to superb
IBM service ;)

--j.

Brendan Kehoe writes:
>Many thanks for all the ideas!
>
>I spoke with him for a bit, and learned:
>
>- his logs show only:
>
>    Feb 12 14:16:17 localhost smartd[3375]: Device: /dev/sda, 194 
>Currently unreadable (pending) sectors
>    Feb 12 14:16:17 localhost smartd[3375]: Device: /dev/sda, 194 
>Offline uncorrectable sectors
>
>  I've suggested he get the disk vendor's diagnostic program to figure 
>out if it's a low-level hardware problem.
>
>- It's a normal single disk set up with / as an ext3 partition under 
>LVM, and its first partition also ext3 as /boot.  I'm trying to dig up 
>anything interesting about LVM doing weird things with disk writes and 
>the like.
>
>- It happens with some files and not others.  He can't do anything to 
>make it happen deliberately.
>
>- He's going to call me back in a bit to let me know if the timestamp 
>changes and if he saw any crontab entries that he doesn't understand.
>
>Thanks for the help!
>B
>
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