Re: [Dump-users] Can't read next inode ...

[<phu...@wi...>]

> > I am attempting to dump a filesystem which has developed a bad
> > block, and the bad block happens to contain some of the inodes.
> > Even though I specified a large -I number, dump is terminating
> > upon reaching the unreadable inode block.
> > 
> > How do I get it to just skip over unreadable blocks, including
> > unreadable inode blocks, and dump whatever can be read?
>
> I'm afraid you can't.
>
> At this point you should make a low level copy of the filesystem
> (using dd for example), and try to repair the filesystem using
> e2fsck ...

I had already made a copy using dd with conv=noerror, and have
encountered two problems (one definite, the other suspected):

- If I try to have dump read from the image file, it misinterprets
  this as a request to dump the image file itself:

  $ ls -l hda7-ddImage
  -r--r-----  1 phutchis wrs 12707980800 Aug  8 21:51 hda7-ddImage

  $ file hda7-ddImage
  hda7-ddImage: Linux rev 1.0 ext3 filesystem data (errors)

  $ /sbin/dump -0 -f hda7-dump-from-ddImage hda7-ddImage 
    DUMP: Date of this level 0 dump: Wed Aug 20 11:58:43 2008
    DUMP: Dumping /dev/mapper/VolGroup00-LogVol00 (/ (dir pdx-punster1/cricket_backups/hda7-ddImage)) to hda7-dump-from-ddImage
    DUMP: Cannot open /dev/mapper/VolGroup00-LogVol00
    DUMP: The ENTIRE dump is aborted.

- the dd manpage does not say what dd does about the unreadable
  blocks.  Ideally it would have filled the corresponding parts
  of the image file with zeros, but I suspect it skipped them
  entirely (so everything beyond the first unreadable block is
  probably at the wrong offset for either e2fsck or dump).