Method and apparatus for detecting file system corruption
AssigneeHewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P.
InventorsLiem M. Nguyen, Thomas Vachuska, Fengliang Hu
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Abstract
The system and method described herein automatically detect various corruptions in a file system and notify a system administrator of the corruption. Detailed information on the file system is collected by a probe process. If the file system is corrupt or inaccessible, the system and method marks the file system as bad, notifies the system administrator and then ceases to attempt to collect information on that system again until it has been repaired.
Claims25
A method for detecting corrupt file systems, comprising:
- identifying an operating system running on a host, the host attached to at least one file system;
- performing file system probes on the at least one file system, the respective file system probes being dependent on operating system type;
- testing each of the at least one file system for responsiveness by appending an open file on each said at least one file system using a multi-level time-out mechanism, wherein the multi-level time-out mechanism comprises a user selectable interval for attempting an append and a user selectable maximum number of tries to attempt a successful append;
- and
- sending, if one of the testing of the corrupt file systems exceeds the maximum number of probe tries at the selected probe interval and the file system probes identify file corruption, a notification that a given file system is corrupt.
A file system corruption detection mechanism operating on a network of computers, comprising:
- means for probing a plurality of file systems on a computer network, wherein the means for probing tests the file system for corruption, and if probing fails to identify corruption, attempts to append data to an open file on a probed file system;
- means for determining whether a maximum number of append tries has been reached, wherein each append try on a file system is separated by a user selectable interval;
- means for determining whether a probed file system is corrupted;
- and
- means for notifying a user of a corrupted file system.
A file system corruption detector running on a host computer, comprising:
- system independent computer code for identifying system unique identifiers for detecting file system corruption;
- and
- computer code for running a probe process, wherein the probe process opens a file on at least one file system connected to the host computer and wherein the probe process attempts to append data to the opened file, and wherein the probe process uses a multi-level time-out mechanism to determine whether the probed file system is functioning adequately, wherein the multi-level time-out mechanism comprises a user selectable interval for attempting and append and a user selectable maximum number of times to attempt a successful append.
A file system corruption detector running on a host computer, comprising:
- system independent computer code for identifying system unique identifiers for detecting file system corruption;
- and
- computer code for running a probe process, wherein the probe process runs on the host computer and opens a file on a least one file system, wherein the probe process attempts to append data to the opened file, wherein the probe process uses a multi-level time-out mechanism to determine whether the probed file system is functioning adequately, and wherein the multi-level time-out mechanism comprises a user selectable interval for attempting an append and a user selectable maximum number of times to attempt a successful append.
A computer readable medium containing computer code for detecting file system corruption on a host computer, the medium comprising:
- a first section of system independent computer code for identifying system unique identifiers for detecting file system corruption;
- and
- a second section of computer code for running a probe process, wherein the probe process opens a file on at least one file system connected to the host computer, wherein the probe process attempts to append data to the opened file, wherein the probe process uses a multi-level time-out mechanism to determine whether the probed file system is functioning adequately, and wherein the multi-level time-out mechanism comprises a user selectable interval for attempting an append and a user selectable maximum number of times to attempt a successful append.
The computer readable medium as recited in claim 24, further comprising a section of computer code for performing an action if a file system is corrupted.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.