Extended attribute inodes have a link count of 1 but they are not
attached to any directories. When an xattr inode with zero ea
references is found, the remedy is to reconnect it to lost+found dir.
Since reconnect operation increments the link count, it would normally
become 2 but to avoid that, check_ea_inode() sets the link count to
zero in anticipation of reconnect operation. And it does it even when
e2fsck is invoked with -n option which causes a fatal e2fsck failure
as can be demonstrated with the following test script: