RHEL6: Grub gives "Error 16: Inconsistent filesystem structure." after cloning an ext4 based /boot and /root
Issue
- Is there a problem cloning an ext4 /boot disk vs ext3 boot disk?
- We have a process to copy our root disk setup to a backup drive for recovery. We do not want to use 'dd' to copy the whole disk because it is too slow.
- The process includes the following steps:
- Add a new disk to the existing system, a similar size as the existing system space (for /boot and /root).
- Create a similar partition table on the new disk, so it matches the original disk as much as possible.
- Create ext4 filesystems on the new disk partitions, matching the original disk.
- Use 'rsync' to copy all files from the source disk filesystems to the new disk filesystems, using a command similar to the following:
# rsync /boot/* /mnt/clone_root/boot/ --sparse --delete --archive --hard-links --one-file-system - Use 'grub-install' to install boot loader on new /boot
- When trying to boot the cloned disk with ext4 file systems we get the following error:
"Error 16: Inconsistent filesystem structure."
- Replacing step #3 above with an ext3 filesystem on /boot does not produce the error, and the system can boot off the clone drive.
- Note that the partitions created by the installer do not fall on a cylinder boundary. It is unknown whether this is related.
Environment
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6
- seen on grub-0.97-75
- /boot on ext4
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