Timeshift and Structure Needs Cleaning

[slimbrick87]

I've been having a 'Structure Needs Cleaning' when I mount a USB stick that has a timeshift snapshot on it. Mind you, this stick with the snapshot on it worked perfectly after I made the snapshot, but as soon as I reboot the system, the 'timeshift' directory on the stick shows 'Structure Needs Cleaning.' I tried to fix it by running 'fsck -y' after unmounting the USB stick and that fixes it so well the backup isn't there anymore. So bear with me and let me be specific on what I've done and how I tried to address the problem.

First, I format a 256 GB USB stick with the following:

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$ sudo fdisk /dev/sdc

n for new partition, defaults to ext4
w for write changes

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$ sudo mke2fs -t ext4 -O ^has_journal /dev/sdc1

Not having a journal is the only way I've found to get ext4 to work on USB sticks and I've used it with no problems in other applications.
Then I modify /etc/fstab to mount it on boot.

I run Timeshift and set up for weekly Snapshots. I set up Timeshift to capture user home directories of /root and /home/eric. The snapshot completes. Here is my df followed by ls -al in the main directory for the usb stick that captures the timeshot.

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eric@rome ~ $ df
Filesystem     1K-blocks     Used Available Use% Mounted on
...
/dev/sdc1      258029956 36666800 208239624  15% /mnt/Linux_Backup
...
eric@rome ~ $ cd /mnt/Linux_Backup
eric@rome /mnt/Linux_Backup $ ls -al
total 28
drwxr-xr-x 4 root root  4096 Jun  8 17:22 .
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root  4096 May 27 19:28 ..
drwx------ 2 root root 16384 Jun  8 11:20 lost+found
drwxr-xr-x 9 root root  4096 Jun  8 19:01 timeshift
eric@rome /mnt/Linux_Backup $ 

Everything looks good. Now, I unmount the usb stick and perform a fsck check and repair on the usb stick. There are errors:

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eric@rome ~ $ sudo fsck /dev/sdc1
fsck from util-linux 2.27.1
e2fsck 1.42.13 (17-May-2015)
Linux_Backup contains a file system with errors, check forced.
Pass 1: Checking inodes, blocks, and sizes
Pass 2: Checking directory structure
Entry 'timeshift' in / (2) has deleted/unused inode 7471105.  Clear<y>? no
Entry 'timeshift' in / (2) has an incorrect filetype (was 2, should be 0).
Fix<y>? no
Entry '..' in <13250893>/<262145> (262145) has deleted/unused inode 13250893.  Clear<y>? no
Entry '..' in <13250893>/<262145> (262145) has an incorrect filetype (was 2, should be 0).
Fix<y>? no

....The list goes on and on.....

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Linux_Backup: ********** WARNING: Filesystem still has errors **********

eric@rome ~ $

So, I try to fix the errors with fsck...

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eric@rome ~ $ sudo fsck -y -t ext4 /dev/sdc1
fsck from util-linux 2.27.1
e2fsck 1.42.13 (17-May-2015)
Linux_Backup contains a file system with errors, check forced.
Pass 1: Checking inodes, blocks, and sizes
Pass 2: Checking directory structure
Entry 'timeshift' in / (2) has deleted/unused inode 7471105.  Clear? yes

Entry '..' in <13250893>/<262145> (262145) has deleted/unused inode 13250893.  Clear? yes

Entry '..' in <13250893>/<262146> (262146) has deleted/unused inode 13250893.  Clear? yes

Entry '..' in <13250893>/<262147> (262147) has deleted/unused inode 13250893.  Clear? yes

The errors go on and on, finally:

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Linux_Backup: ***** FILE SYSTEM WAS MODIFIED *****
Linux_Backup: 124970/16384000 files (0.4% non-contiguous), 2867825/65535744 blocks

Now I remount the USB, and go to the mountpoint, and the timeshift directory is all gone:

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eric@rome ~ $ sudo mount -t ext4 /dev/sdc1 /mnt/Linux_Backup
eric@rome ~ $ cd /mnt/Linux_Backup
eric@rome /mnt/Linux_Backup $ ls -al
total 24
drwxr-xr-x   3 root root  4096 Jun  8 17:22 .
drwxr-xr-x   3 root root  4096 May 27 19:28 ..
drwx------ 949 root root 16384 Jun  8 11:20 lost+found
eric@rome /mnt/Linux_Backup $

It's all in lost and found now, I'm sure. This is very annoying. Any advice for sorting this out?

Slim