Just to pass along:

We recently had problems with e2fsck crashing on a 6TB ext3 filesystem.
We are using SciLinux 4.5 (4x rolling updates) x86_64.

During both dry-run (e2fsck -n) and normal usage, e2fsck (version
1.35-12 (28-Feb-2004)) would crash with the message:
> *** glibc detected *** free(): invalid pointer: 0x0000007fbffffb98 ***

Best guest it was failing on "triply indirect block":
> e2fsck 1.35 (28-Feb-2004)
>
>
> Pass 1: Checking inodes, blocks, and sizes
> Inode 701448202 has illegal block(s).  Clear? no
>
> Illegal block #0 (1709676622) in inode 701448202.  IGNORED.
> Illegal block #1 (3212400709) in inode 701448202.  IGNORED.
> Illegal block #2 (2960742470) in inode 701448202.  IGNORED.
> Illegal block #3 (2239322183) in inode 701448202.  IGNORED.
> Illegal block #5 (3363330113) in inode 701448202.  IGNORED.
> Illegal block #-1 (2289784904) in inode 701448202.  IGNORED.
> Illegal block #-2 (2172345417) in inode 701448202.  IGNORED.
> Illegal block #-3 (4209346628) in inode 701448202.  IGNORED.
> Error while iterating over blocks in inode 701448202: Illegal triply 
> >indirect block found
e2fsck: aborted

Fortunately, the latest e2fsprogs (1.40-3 (05-Dec-2007)) was able to
complete the file check.

-- 
Chris Hunter
Systems Programmer
Department of Astronomy, Yale University
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