error in inode.c in kernel 2.4.1!

[Rick Rosinski]

I just recovered from a serious "crash"!
After successfully upgrading my Slack 7.1's binutils, utils-linux, etc, etc 
and installing kernel 2.4.1 successfully, I decided to upgrade my Xfree86 to 
4.0.2 from 3.3.6.  I left the X code to compile overnight (was too tired to 
wait), I woke up and checked to see if it compiled successfully.  What I saw 
was basically this:

"kernel bug in inode.c line 381" or some line near there.
Then I saw segmentation fault.  and some other code after that (like it tried 
to keep on compiling or something).
I could not ctrl-c or ctrl-d, alt-ctrl-delete anything.  (the numlock worked 
still, though so it wasn't a total freeze, at least).

So, I did the only thing I could do - hit the reset switch.
During the fsck phase of booting, it informed me that there was an 
inconsistancy in the inodes on /dev/hda11 (my scrap drive, which is where I 
was compiling Xfree86).  It said that I could hit ctrl-d to continue booting 
normally, or enter a root password for maintenance (and since I don't have a 
root password - this is a stand-alone machine at home) it wouldn't let me in 
for maintenance.  Ctrl-d had the same results.  It would just prepare for 
rebooting.  I tried it all again, but it wanted to shutdown for reboot.

So, I created boot disks and root disks with rawrite.exe on my win system and 
booted up with them on the linux system.  I moved whatever stuff from my 
/dev/hda11 onto other partitions, then reformatted /dev/hda11.

I can boot now and everything is back to normal, but I was set back by the 
type of error - in inode.c!  This makes me very uncomfortable, since that is 
directly related to how linux handles the file system.  Should I even try to 
recompile XFree86 4.0.2?  Hell, I am wondering if I should drop back to the 
2.2.x kernels - the error did mention that it was a "kernel bug", inode.c, 
and such.

Any tips on how to procede?


-- 
Rick Rosinski
http://rickrosinski.com
rick@rickrosinski.com