Some notes on problems in A/UX

[John T Kohl]

In article <5123 at hoptoad.uucp> hugh at hoptoad.uucp (Hugh Daniel) writes:
> ...
>	(Question: Has anyone else run into cases where fsck finds a 
>	problem, reboots, then finds ANOTHER problem so bad it has to
>	reboot a second time?  I have seen this in A/UX and never 
>	elsewhere.)
> ...

Yes.  We see this very often here at Project Athena, with the BSD
filesystem.  If /etc/passwd gets corrupted in some fashion (say, a bad
link count), fsck will happily re-set it and cause a reboot.  But since
fsck uses /etc/passwd to display owner names of broken files, the kernel
will update the inode when fsck closes the file.

So fsck has absolutely no chance of ever fixing this problem; each
reboot turns up the same problem.  Manual intervention is needed.

John Kohl <jtkohl at ATHENA.MIT.EDU>
Digital Equipment Corporation/MIT Project Athena
(As usual, the opinions expressed above do not necessarily reflect the
opinions of my employer. :-)