(bug reported) root filesystem dirty after every shutdown

[squigish]

Hi there.

I'm upgrading from Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid to Mint 14 MATE, and I've run into a couple of bumps.

Every time I boot into mint 14 MATE, it tells me that my root file system is dirty/was not cleanly unmounted, and it needs to run fsck. If I let it run (without pressing c to cancel), it often finds a few errors, usually several of

Code: Select all

\dev\sdd1: Deleted inode xxxxxxx has zero dtime.  FIXED.

This happens no matter how I shutdown Mint. I can do it from the terminal, from the gui, or by pulling the plug on my CPU, and they all result in a dirty file system. It's not just something weird with the startup sequence; if I boot into Ubuntu (which is on a different drive), and run fsck on the mint root partition, it has the same result as the fsck run during the mint startup.

Typical sequences:
Shutdown mint.
Boot mint.
Mint runs fsck, fixes errors, reboots.
boot mint successfully.

or:
shutdown mint.
boot ubuntu.
manually run fsck on the mint root partition, and fix errors
shutdown ubuntu
boot mint successfully.

I am using an ext2 filesystem for my / partition, and ext4 for /home. I remember researching file systems when I did my previous install of ubuntu (almost 3 years ago), and determined then that ext2 was better for a root partition, for some reason I no longer recall. Is this still the case? I currently have mint installed on a spinning HDD, but plan to migrate it to the SSD that I've been using for Ubuntu.

So the big question is, why is my filesystem having errors? The only thing I can think of is a physical defect on the drive. I'm going to run a surface scan overnight to check for that, and will report the results when next I'm online. The only thing I've done on my mint installation is to install the AMD proprietary graphics drivers. Other than that, it's a virgin install.

EDIT: Surface scan reported 0 bad blocks.
EDIT2: Removed reference to ext2 in title, since the problem persists after converting the filesystem to ext4.

[caf4926]

I used ext4 as soon as it was available as an option
Never a problem yet

[squigish]

I converted the root filesystem to ext4, and it still has the same problem.

I don't even know where to begin to troubleshoot this. Any ideas?

[karlchen]

Hello, squigish.

You are not the only one experiencing problems because the root file system is not umounted cleanly and therefore requires recovery on every reboot.
Please, have a look at this thread, Mint13-14 Latest Kernel Version Causing EXT4-fs Errors, and at this Launchpad bug report, Latest Kernel Version 3.2.0-36 Causing EXT4-fs Errors.
With respect to Ubuntu 12.04.x and therefore Mint 13 kernel 3.2.0-37 seems to solve the problem, the same is not really the case for Ubuntu 12.10 and Mint 14 running K3.5.0-23.
Maybe the kernel is not even the root cause, but just a factor in the game. Not sure.
Somehow it must be possible to find out what causes the root filesystem "/" to be busy thus preventing it from umounting cleanly right before every halt or reboot.

Kind regards,
Karl

[squigish]

You are not the only one experiencing problems because the root file system is not umounted cleanly and therefore requires recovery on every reboot.
Please, have a look at this thread, Mint13-14 Latest Kernel Version Causing EXT4-fs Errors, and at this Launchpad bug report, Latest Kernel Version 3.2.0-36 Causing EXT4-fs Errors.
With respect to Ubuntu 12.04.x and therefore Mint 13 kernel 3.2.0-37 seems to solve the problem, the same is not really the case for Ubuntu 12.10 and Mint 14 running K3.5.0-23.
Maybe the kernel is not even the root cause, but just a factor in the game. Not sure.
Somehow it must be possible to find out what causes the root filesystem "/" to be busy thus preventing it from umounting cleanly right before every halt or reboot.

Thank you very much! It looks like the developers are aware of the problem, and all I have to do is wait.