[Gllug] Ext3 volume seems to be swapspace

[Kostas Georgiou]

On Wed, Mar 28, 2007 at 05:36:44PM +0100, Tom Schutzer-Weissmann wrote:

> After some problems one of my partitions no longer mounts unless the 
> filesystem type (ext3) is specified. If I don't specify it, mount complains 
> that it "looks like swapspace".

Did you run mkswap on the partition or changed the partition type? What
do you get from /sbin/blkid? From what I know mount checks the superblock
or uses blkid (which should do the same) which suggests that your superblock
is indeed corrupted. mount -t ext3 will also check the primary superblock
only and it shouldn't work without the sb=... option to use an alternative
one which suggests that the superblock is OK. Now I am confused.

Taking a wild guess I would say that you superblock is fine and something
else confuses blkid.

> Is this a symptom of a bigger problem? Perhaps the main superblock is 
> missing - in which case, can I restore it from the backup ones?

e2fsck will do this for you, from the manual page:
-b superblock
...
   If  an alternative superblock is specified and the filesystem is
   not opened read-only, e2fsck will make  sure  that  the  primary
   superblock  is  updated  appropriately  upon  completion  of the
   filesystem check.
...

Cheers,
Kostas Georgiou
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