Index: oak-segment-tar/src/main/java/org/apache/jackrabbit/oak/segment/SegmentBufferWriter.java
===================================================================
--- oak-segment-tar/src/main/java/org/apache/jackrabbit/oak/segment/SegmentBufferWriter.java	(revision 1839678)
+++ oak-segment-tar/src/main/java/org/apache/jackrabbit/oak/segment/SegmentBufferWriter.java	(working copy)
@@ -37,10 +37,12 @@
 import static org.apache.jackrabbit.oak.segment.SegmentId.isDataSegmentId;
 import static org.apache.jackrabbit.oak.segment.SegmentVersion.LATEST_VERSION;
 
+import java.io.ByteArrayOutputStream;
 import java.io.IOException;
 import java.util.Collection;
 import java.util.Set;
 
+import org.apache.commons.io.HexDump;
 import org.apache.jackrabbit.oak.segment.RecordNumbers.Entry;
 import org.apache.jackrabbit.oak.segment.file.tar.GCGeneration;
 import org.jetbrains.annotations.NotNull;
@@ -283,6 +285,63 @@
         dirty = true;
     }
 
+    private String dumpSegmentBuffer() {
+        StringBuilder builder = new StringBuilder();
+        builder.append("Segment buffer corruption detected\n");
+        builder.append("Segment ID: ");
+
+        if (segment == null) {
+            builder.append("None");
+        } else {
+            builder.append(segment.getSegmentId());
+        }
+
+        builder.append("\n");
+        builder.append("Full generation: ").append(gcGeneration.getFullGeneration()).append("\n");
+        builder.append("Tail generation: ").append(gcGeneration.getGeneration()).append("\n");
+        builder.append("Compacted: ").append(gcGeneration.isCompacted()).append("\n");
+        builder.append("References:\n");
+
+        if (segmentReferences.size() == 0) {
+            builder.append("\tNone\n");
+        } else {
+            for (SegmentId segmentId : segmentReferences) {
+                builder.append("\t").append(segmentId).append("\n");
+            }
+        }
+
+        builder.append("Records:\n");
+
+        if (recordNumbers.size() == 0) {
+            builder.append("\tNone\n");
+        } else {
+            for (Entry entry : recordNumbers) {
+                builder
+                    .append("\t")
+                    .append("number=")
+                    .append(entry.getRecordNumber())
+                    .append(", type=")
+                    .append(entry.getType())
+                    .append(", offset=")
+                    .append(entry.getOffset())
+                    .append("\n");
+            }
+        }
+
+        builder.append("Length: ").append(length).append("\n");
+
+        try {
+            ByteArrayOutputStream bos = new ByteArrayOutputStream();
+            HexDump.dump(buffer, 0, bos, 0);
+            builder.append(bos.toString());
+        } catch (IOException e) {
+            builder.append("Buffer contents not available");
+            LOG.warn("Unable to dump buffer contents", e);
+        }
+
+        return builder.toString();
+    }
+
     /**
      * Adds a segment header to the buffer and writes a segment to the segment
      * store. This is done automatically (called from prepare) when there is not
@@ -302,6 +361,7 @@
             int totalLength = align(HEADER_SIZE + referencedSegmentIdCount * SEGMENT_REFERENCE_SIZE + recordNumberCount * RECORD_SIZE + length, 16);
 
             if (totalLength > buffer.length) {
+                LOG.warn(dumpSegmentBuffer());
                 throw new IllegalStateException(String.format(
                         "Too much data for a segment %s (referencedSegmentIdCount=%d, recordNumberCount=%d, length=%d, totalLength=%d)",
                         segment.getSegmentId(), referencedSegmentIdCount, recordNumberCount, length, totalLength));