Andreas Dilger wrote:

On Nov 16, 2006  11:50 -0500, Jeff Mahoney wrote:

quoted

 Currently, if a corrupted directory entry with rec_len=0 is encountered,
 we still trust that the data is valid. This can cause an infinite loop
 in htree_dirblock_to_tree() since the iteration loop will never make any
 progress.

Actually, I think Eric Sandeen was working on similar fixes already, and
instead of doing a per-item check each time we look at the entry it does
a full-block check the first time it is read (as ext2 does).

quoted

 This fixes the problem described at:
 http://projects.info-pull.com/mokb/MOKB-10-11-2006.html

Would also be good to CC linux-ext4, where the ext3 maintainers live.
Hmm, maybe we need to update MAINTAINERS with the new list address?

This should already be fixed, in some fashion, in -mm:

http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/akpm/patches/2.6/2.6.19-rc5/2.6.19-rc5-mm2/broken-out/handle-ext3-directory-corruption-better.patch

I have been looking at doing a check only when the block is first read,
but other things have come up & taken some time, and that is a bit on
the back burner now...

-Eric