E2fsck aborts: memory allocation failed

ext3fsckmemory

I am trying to fix a 9 TB filesystem with e2fsck, however the scan always fails after about 10% or so with the following error:

Error storing directory block information: ... Memory allocation failed
e2fsck: aborted

The machine runs Ubuntu 10 (64 bit) and has 4 GB of memory. I have noticed that during checks the ram is getting nearly exhausted even though top only reports only 22% usage by the application and the memory can be reclaimed by a drop_caches. The swap space isn't touched.

In any case, I have approached this by giving e2fsck a scratch_files location which it fills with about 500M by the time it fails. Additionally, I have also set swapon -a, which also seem to prolong e2fsck's crashes.

How can I tune e2fsck so it doesn't crash? Is there any better way to repair my fs?

Best Answer

Sounds like you're running e2fsck from the local OS?

I don't know if it would make a difference or not, but what happens if you try from a LiveCD? Some have a lomem boot option, have you looked into that?

For lack of a better idea as of yet, is that an option?

Related Solutions

Linux – How to get e2fsck to show progress information

The -C flag will display a progress bar. Performance differences depending on how fsck is called.

And very cool, if e2fsck is already running, you can send a USR1 signal for it to start displaying a progress bar. USR2 to stop. Example:

killall -USR1 e2fsck

From FSCK(8):

   -C     Display completion/progress bars for those filesys-
          tems  checkers (currently only for ext2) which sup-
          port them.   Fsck will manage the filesystem check-
          ers  so  that  only  one  of  them  will  display a
          progress bar at a time.

From E2FSCK(8):

   -C fd  This  option  causes  e2fsck  to  write  completion
          information  to  the  specified  file descriptor so
          that the progress of the filesystem  check  can  be
          monitored.   This  option is typically used by pro-
          grams  which  are  running  e2fsck.   If  the  file
          descriptor specified is 0, e2fsck will print a com-
          pletion bar as it goes about  its  business.   This
          requires  that e2fsck is running on a video console
          or terminal.

Silent e2fsck – safe to stop

Until recently, I would have said that interrupting it was suicidal. However, five weeks ago, a colleague gaily interrupted a reboot fsck on a nastily dirty file system, before I could stop him. The FS was later fscked without incident. I have since, myself, interrupted several fscks on multi-TB file systems, because I didn't want them to happen yet, and I've not so far had any problems and when I redid them I used -C 0 as well.

As ever, Your Mileage May Vary, and whatever action you take is your own responsibility; but I was very surprised when my colleague got away with it, so I started to try it myself, and I've been alright so far. I thought that might be of interest to you.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Linux – How to get e2fsck to show progress information

Silent e2fsck – safe to stop

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