Root Inode Corruption In Linux After Running Fsck On Mounted File System

In Linux operating system, FSCK (File System Check) is a useful utility that allows you to examine the integrity and consistency of your Linux file system. The utility also offers you an alternative method to repair damaged file system and review the problems that have to be fixed on your file system. Though, this tool offers you with a number of advantages, running this command on the mounted Linux file system lead to file system corruption and data loss situations. In these cases, you need to go for Linux Data Recovery solutions to get your valuable data back.

In a practical situation, when you run FSCK command-line utility on an online Ext3 file system of Linux computer, you may come across the following error message:

EXT3-fs: corrupt root Inode, run e2fsck

After this error message, if you run e2fsck on same volume, you encounter below error message:

Root Inode is not a directory. Clear?

Above error message gives you two options to select from- Yes or No. If you select yes, it removes parent entry of each Inode in root directory and gives underwritten error message:

Missing ‘..’ in directory Inode

In these cases, you need to find out the cause root of the issue and then perform Data Recovery Linux by resolving it.

Cause

This issue occurs due to corruption to the file system, when you run FSCK tool on a mounted Linux file system. When above errors occur, you can not boot up your system and all of your precious data stored on Linux hard drive become inaccessible. If you need to run this file system consistency check utility, you should first unmount the file system.

Solution

In order to fix file system corruption issue, you need to replace damaged file system. It is possible through formatting the hard drive and reinstalling the operating system. Formatting resolves all of the disk related problems but also cause data loss and need Linux Recovery to be handled.

Recovery can easily be performed using third party Linux Data Recovery Software. The applications are able to handle most of the logical data loss situations. They thoroughly scan entire hard drive and extract all of the lost, missing and inaccessible data from it. Such recovery tools are easy and safe to use with simple user interface and non-destructive behavior.

Stellar Phoenix Linux Data Recovery is the most comprehensive tool to ensure absolute recovery in the majority of data loss situations. It recovers lost data from all major Linux distributions including Fedora Core, Red Hat, Ubuntu and SUSE. The software supports recovery from Ext4, Ext3, Ext2, FAT12, FAT16 and FAT32 file system volumes.

Resolving JBD no valid journal superblock found Error in Linux

Ext3 (Third Extended File System) is a journaling and advanced file system, used for the Linux operating system. If your system faces improper system shutdown or system crash, file system journaling empowers endues it to recover without losing data. Ext3 file system contains a number of significant data structures and Superblock is one of them. It stores critical data about file system, such as type of file system, size of file system, file system mount status, and information about all other hard drive data structures. Corruption to superblock lead to data loss and need Linux Data Recovery to be sorted out.

In order to avoid critical situations, in case of superblock corruption, Linux maintains duplicate copies of superblock. You can use the redundant copy for mounting the file system, after locating it. In some cases, you may encounter the below error message while trying to mount the Ext3 file system volume:

-JBD: no valid journal superblock found-

Furthermore, you encounters one more error message that indicates problems with your system wile loading the file system journal. Both these errors terminate the hard drive mount operation and make the disk inaccessible.

JBD layer (Journaling Block Device) is an API (Application Programing Interface), used by the journaling code of Ext3 file system. This is proposed to express implementation of the Ext3 file system journal.

The problem may be corrupted journal. After corruption, journal can not be loaded. If you try to replay the damaged journal, file system data structures, including Superblock, may get overwritten. It generally occurs as Ext3 file system does not support the checksumming during write process to journal and thus finally need Data Recovery Linux.

In such critical circumstances, you can try fixing the hard drive through fsck command-line utility. If the problem persists and file system is no longer mountable, Linux Recovery is required to handle the situation.

Recovery is potential through the most advanced and effective applications, known as Ext3 Recovery software. They carry out in-depth scan of the entire storage media to search, locate, and recover lost data in all logical data loss situations.

The tools have simple graphical user interface to provide easy to use. They do not alter original data from the hard drive as they have read-only and non-destructive conduct.

Stellar Phoenix Linux Data Recovery is the most effective solution for all your Linux data loss situations. It recovers lost data from Ext4, Ext3, Ext2, FAT12, FAT16, and FAT32 file system volumes. The software works well with all major distributions of Linux operating system, including Red Hat, SUSE, Fedora, Debian, and Ubuntu.

Converting Linux File System From Ext3 To Ext4

The Ext4 (Fourth Extended File System) is an advanced and effective journaling file system that is developed as successor of Ext3 file system. It provides high performance and removes 64-bit storage limits of earlier file systems. The file system supports backward compatibility with the Ext3 and Ext2 file systems. Thus it is possible to mount Ext2 and Ext3 file system as Ext4. To gain benefit of these advanced features, you need to migrate file system from Ext3 to Ext4. Before migrating the file system, you should create full backup of your data as failure of this process may lead to data loss and require Linux Data Recovery to be sorted out.

Converting a non-root file system

If you are converting Ext3 file system, which can be unmounted, this is quite simple process. Follow underwritten steps for conversion:

Unmount the volume.
Run file system check using fsck.ext3 command to make sure that it is in sane situation.
Enable new features of Ext4 on file system using tune2fs command.
Run fsck.ext4 command. It will find errors that are usual. Let the command fix them.
Edit /etc/fstab file to make it Ext4 in place of Ext3 file system for /home.
Mount your new file system.

Converting root file system

Converting the root file system is quite tricky as you won’t be able to unmount it because your computer is running on it. Go through below steps to convert your root file system:
First thing is to change /etc/fstab file as Ext4 in place of Ext3 for root volume.
Remount the root file system as read-only.
Check your file system using fsck.ext3 command. It will then restart your system.
Enable all Ext4 features on root file system.
Check your root file system for errors using fsck.ext4 command.

Though, it is a good idea to convert your file system from Ext3 to Ext4, but in case if the process fails and you do not have complete backup of your valuable data, you might encounter serious data loss and need to carry out Data Recovery Linux.

Recovery is best possible using third party Linux Recovery Software. The applications recovers your data in most of the data loss situations, without demanding sound and prior technical skills from you. With read-only and non-destructive conduct, Linux Data Recovery software are absolute safe to use.

Stellar Phoenix Linux Data Recovery is the most efficient solution to handle all types of data loss situations on your Linux system. It supports recovery from Ext4, Ext3, Ext2 and ReiserFS file system volumes. The software is compatible with all major distributions of Linux including Debian, RedHat, Fedora and Ubuntu.

Severe Data Loss in Linux Upon Running fsck on Mounted File System

Are you unable to mount your Linux hard drive volume? The problem could be due to corruption the Linux hard drive data structures. To sort out such problems, Linux provides fsck utility. It is a command-line utility, which checks integrity and consistency of Linux file system, finds errors, and tries to fix them. However, in case if you run this utility on a mounted or online file system, you may come across catastrophic data loss situations. At this point, you need to carry out Linux Data Recovery to get your valuable data back.

If you mistakenly run fsck on a mounted Linux file system, the root iNode may got damaged and all iNodes start calling similar blocks. When you try to mount the volume after fsck, you may encounter the below error message:

-Mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/hda1, missing codepage or helper program, or other error. In some cases useful info is found in syslog — try dmesg

tail or so-

After this behavior of Linux operating system, when you run ‘dmesg’, as stated in the above error message, you encounter further error message:

-EXT3-fs: corrupt root inode, run e2fsck-

When you run e2fsck, as suggested in above error, it gives you further error message stating:

-Root inode is not a directory. Clear?-

If you say ‘yes’ to above error, then it goes to fix the problem and then remove parent entry for each iNode in root directory. When you unallocate root iNode and blocks manually, and then try to rebuilt root iNode, it says that it can not allocate any block in file system.

Cause

This behavior is caused due to corruption to the file system, superblock, root iNode, or any other Linux data structure. Operating system can not locate the hard drive volumes and stored files, after corruption to the data structure.

Resolution

To sort out this problem and perform Ext3 Recovery, you need to format the hard drive and reinstall operating system. Although, this method is able to fix most of the hard drive related problems, however also deleted all hard drive volumes and files.

This entire behavior cause serious data loss situations and need Ext3 Recovery software to extract lost data. The applications perform Data Recovery Linux in a quick, safe, and easy way.