DirEntry without INodes - trying to access a "nonexistant ino"

[Kreitner Richard]

Hello,

I am currently analyzing the JFFS2 file system of some embedded Linux devices (Kernel 2.4.31) which were returned due to a file system corruption in the SRAM.

What I found out so far is that there is a file consisting only of a single DirEntry but no corresponding INodes. As far as I understand the JFFS2, there has to be at least one zero size data INode belonging to a DirEntry to get a valid file. The driver also complains about this in the debug log (see below).

Trying to access the corrupt file which is not always the same in every image, results in an input/output error (e.g. by using the ls command). Our application wants to set permissions on it during the boot process and stops at this point with a fatal error.

In the case of the failing devices, the application is configured to continuously write a log file (600K ringbuffer) over a long period (up to 3 months), so there's heavy activity in the file system and the Garbage Collector should run very often.

Is it possible that the INode is overwritten with the data of another INode due to a bug in the Garbage Collector?

Or can anyone imagine of something else that could cause a problem like this?

...
Dirent 0: ".", ino #25
Dirent 1: "..", ino #2
Dirent 2: "eserver", ino #50, type 4
jffs2_readdir() out, offset = 3
jffs2_readdir() for dir_i #50
Dirent 0: ".", ino #50
Dirent 1: "..", ino #25
Dirent 2: "profiles.tlv", ino #683, type 8
Dirent 3: "transactionlog.tlv", ino #55, type 8
Skipping deletion dirent "configuration.tlv.tmp"
Dirent 5: "configuration.tlv", ino #686, type 8
Dirent 6: "terminallog.tlv", ino #58, type 8
Dirent 7: "transactionhistory.tlv", ino #56, type 8
jffs2_readdir() out, offset = 8
jffs2_do_read_inode() on nonexistent ino 55
...

Regards
 
R. Kreitner