On Aug 24, 2007, at 12:57 PM, Allen S. Rout wrote:

we've traced this back to some files which had objectively insane
metadata (negative atime (why does anything interpret that as signed,
anyway?), mtimes after 2038, etc).  So we agree that the files in
question have data which it is not possible to correctly capture.


But we're wondering if it's reasonable to halt processing at this
point. ...

Allen -

I would want to, as wild stuff like this may signal file system
corruption, which I would want called out and addressed ASAP.
Bizarre inode data is scary stuff.  If there is file system
corruption, you definitely don't want further backups sending new
Active files containing useless crud, thus displacing the earlier
versions of the file(s), which may contain good data, which you may
well want for restoral.  At a minimum, I would investigate how those
files entered the file system.

   Richard Sims