Patent ID: 8171000

Claim:
A method for reviewing a data storage system, comprising: providing a file system supporting locks on metadata of local storage media of a node; a file system reviewer obtaining a mutual exclusion lock on select metadata, including user metadata, said file system reviewer embedded within a server in communication with the file system; the file system reviewer performing an automated consistency check on said locked metadata to determine validity of data within a locked data structure, wherein the file system is mounted during the consistency check and data referred to by the locked metadata is available, said consistency check including: for each data object identified as a file verifying: a file attribute, a valid parent directory, recording of used space in an associated free map space, an absence of a duplicate block, a link count with a shadow data structure, and a security attribute; for each data object identified as a directory verifying: a directory attribute, a valid parent directory, a directory entry attribute, validity of an object in a container, a link count with a shadow data structure, and a security attribute; and for each data object identified as a symbolic link verifying a symbolic link attribute; and reporting corruption of inconsistent locked metadata to an operator.