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[Thinkpad T14] Files become corrupted but only when downloaded (lemmy.world)
submitted 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) by Imhotep@lemmy.world to c/linuxquestions@lemmy.zip
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I've acquired a second hand Thinkpad T14 recently (gen 1, Intel version). Running Fedora Gnome.

The SSD seems fine.
I tested it with Gnome Disks; I filled the drive with files and checked their integrity; also copied files around, on drive and from USB. No issues.

But many downloaded files become corrupted. The download finishes normally, but if If I try to open said files they fail (in the middle of a video for example) and if I copy them I get an "input/output" error.
LAN or WAN, over ethernet or Wifi, it doesn't matter.

Could it still be the SSD? Or maybe a driver issue?

Thank you for reading!

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[–] themoken@startrek.website 5 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (2 children)

Huh, storage or RAM problems would be evident in your file tests (and elsewhere). Can you visit websites normally? Stream YouTube etc.? It would be very strange for a broken network device to corrupt files.

Also, since you didn't mention where the downloads are coming from... No chance of corruption at the source?

The input/output error makes me think disk issue (since it should copy corrupt files just fine, it's just data) but that should also be triggered by copying from a separate device. A more thorough disk check may be in order, like a badblock run or something.

[–] Imhotep@lemmy.world 4 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Browsing and streaming no issues. Or any other daily computer task, all fine. No weird behavior, lags or freezes, nothing.

I've checked the source files, they're ok. I've even downloaded them from another computer, and transferred them on the Thinkpad with a USB stick, and they can be opened normally. Downloads are coming from various websites, a VPS, a local server.

badblock run

I'll do that now.
Thanks for the help!!!

[–] themoken@startrek.website 3 points 4 days ago (1 children)

No sweat, I hope that's enlightening. Another thing that may be interesting is checking dmesg after you trigger the input/output error (or just generally since you are seeing silent corruption). Bad errors there are usually signs of hardware issues, and may also give you something more specific to search with.

[–] Imhotep@lemmy.world 2 points 4 days ago

Yeah I thought of checking dmesg too late, I was already running the - destructive - badblocks command...
It is finishing I think, and found zero errors.
My plan now is to install a different distribution to see if it makes a difference. I the error reappears I'll remember to check the logs.

[–] forrgott@lemmy.zip 2 points 4 days ago (2 children)

Is there any chance this could be caused by malware on their router? I'm puking this right outta, well, you know where; just curious if the evidence would even fit my theory...

[–] sga@piefed.social 2 points 4 days ago

this can be tested by using some other machine, it is unlikely a malware infected router would serve differently for different client devices.

[–] themoken@startrek.website 2 points 4 days ago

I mean, anything is possible, but that seems farfetched to me. The router is typically a hard target for malware unless you have physical or at least LAN access. They are generally pretty locked down and don't execute anything from remote access, they examine packet headers and send them on their way. If it was compromised I'd expect something more nefarious than ruining file transfers too.

The biggest strike against this being a network hardware/driver issue is that normal browsing works. If packets were being screwed up in transit, connections would drop, text and images would be corrupt as well (which the browser would probably choke on). It seems to have an issue only when the disk is involved, when data is being saved.

[–] sga@piefed.social 3 points 4 days ago (1 children)

can you do some tests?

I hope you have some other machine (for example a phone).

now download the same file on both devices (ideally do it for more than 1 file, and pick something which is static)(static here means file does not change. if for example you download a video from a site, and they encode all their streams live, there is possibility that file result is slightly different).

now find hashes for both the files. i am not going to explain what is a hash here, but if you want a brief, imagine it being a unique id for each file.

to find it, go to terminal and type

md5sum <path> where path is the file path (to know the path, you can often just drag a file from your graphical file man manager into terminal and it should auto fill the path).

this will produce a strange looking string.

do this for file on both devices (if you are on a phone, this is hard. instead, you can try to copy to your linux desktop, preferably with a wired connection to reduce variables).

if both hashes are same, the files are same. in this situation, your file viewer/player is broken. there are possibilities of your memory being bad or drivers being bad but these are miniscule.

there is another possibility that your drive is either out of space, or out of inodes (something fancy, related to filesystem, not explaining that here). input/output error can often happen from such things. in this situation, best course of action is boot a live iso, and clean the disk (for example, if it is a btrfs partition, and it keeps making snapshots which are not cleaned properly, or some bad program keeps creating extremely tiny files, extremely fast).

we need a lot more information if this is the case.

if file hash is different, then it is simpler - either your downloader is borked (use a different browser, or use command line downloader, like wget/curl/aria2), or your disk is broken, or your file system is borked (something similar to above but more pronounced).

changing browser/downloader fixes the problem - you are golden. if not, try swapping out the ssd, and reformat a fresh install.

[–] Imhotep@lemmy.world 2 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

I checked the drive's health with badblocks tonight, which wiped everything unfortunately.
Then I tried another distro (Ubuntu) and the issue was gone.

I didn't check the hash for failing files, but I downloaded with rsync also and the issue still happened.

Thank you very much for your help though. When I find the time I'll reinstall Fedora, and if the issue repeats itself I'll do more tests.