OneFS error: "Could not recover journal. Contact Customer Support Immediately"

Summary: Upon booting, a node fails to fully start up and a Journal error message is displayed.

This article applies to This article does not apply to This article is not tied to any specific product. Not all product versions are identified in this article.

Symptoms

 Upon booting, a node fails to fully start up and the following error message is displayed: "Could not recover journal. Contact Isilon Customer Support Immediately."

A node does not boot successfully.


One of the following messages might be displayed at the Command-line interface during the boot sequence of the node. 



Bad version: 0

Unable to save journal (isi_dumpjournal -s returned 1)
Error output:
    Writing v4/v5/v6 journal
     type       sector      bytes
    -----   ---------- ----------
    Bad version: 0
    isi_dumpjournal: Bad v4 superblock sect 0x0
Unable to save journal /var/journal/journal:
Restore failed
!! The journal test has encountered a problem.

!! Could not recover journal. Contact Isilon Customer Support
!! immediately.

!! Type 'prompt' to drop to a shell.
 
Journal state does not match the node and cluster state.
 
Test Journal exited with error - Checking Isilon Journal integrity...
The journal state is internally consistent, but the journal state does not match the node and cluster state. Journal
: cluster guid 000000000000000000000000000000000000, device id 0. Disk: cluster guid 0007430733ba99650a52911df09ba81
ca8bc, device id 4. Contact Isilon Customer Support immediately.
Please contact Isilon Customer Support at 1-877-2-ISILON.
Command Options:
1) Enter recovery shell
2) Continue booting
3) Reboot
 

DRAM journal is invalid.

 
Test Journal exited with error - Checking Isilon Journal integrity...
Attempting to save journal to default location
Warning: /etc/ifs/journal_bad exists. Saving bad journal.
OneFS is unmounted
Writing journal_backup_valid : backup in progress
Writing journal_backup_serial : unmounted backup at Sun Oct 20 08:36:31 2013
Saving journal to /var/journal/journal.gz
Unable to save journal (isi_dumpjournal -s returned 1)
Error output:
data 422768 8192
data 787792 8192
data 617904 8192
Bad flags: 0xe01d
isi_dumpjournal: Bad v4 txn block sect 0x1a57f
Unable to save journal /var/journal/journal:
DRAM journal is invalid, initiating recovery...
Attempting to save and restore journal to clear any ECC errors in unused DRAM blocks...
Restore failed
Could not recover journal. Contact Isilon Customer Support immediately.
Please contact Isilon Customer Support at 1-877-2-ISILON.
Command Options:
1) Enter recovery shell
2) Continue booting
3) Reboot
 

Cause

Errors were detected in the NVRAM journal, and the node was unable to restore or locate a journal backup. Journals track file system operations before they are committed to disk. During a normal shutdown or reboot of the node, the NVRAM contents are backed up to disk.
 

During a node reboot, OneFS validates the NVRAM journal. If the NVRAM journal does not contain valid data, the node attempts to restore the journal backup from the boot disk. If the backup is also invalid, the node stops booting and displays an error message.

Resolution

The solution procedure varies depending on the OneFS protection level and the number of offline devices in the cluster. For more information about protection level, see the "Data protection overview" section of the OneFS Administration Guide.

  • If the number of offline devices in the cluster is below the node protection level, the node with the inconsistent journal must be Smartfailed from the cluster. Begin SmartFailing the node, and contact Dell Technical Support for additional assistance and information collection.

    CAUTION: Do not reformat the node. Reformatting the node reduces the amount of information available to Dell Technical Support for diagnosis.

  • If the number of offline devices in the cluster is above the node protection level, data may be unavailable or lost. Contact Dell Technical Support immediately.

Affected Products

Isilon
Article Properties
Article Number: 000032508
Article Type: Solution
Last Modified: 28 Aug 2025
Version:  4
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