Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!watmath!att!dptg!rutgers!gatech!rebel!dscatl!wa4mei!nanovx!techwood!paldn!pwilcox
From: pwilcox@paldn.UUCP (Peter McLeod Wilcox)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.microport
Subject: Re: Missing inodes on V/386 & News
Summary: me too.
Message-ID: <130@paldn.UUCP>
Date: 25 Jul 89 11:46:52 GMT
References: <456@wa3wbu.UUCP>
Sender: news@paldn.UUCP
Organization: Paladin Solutions, Dawsonville GA
Lines: 29

In article <456@wa3wbu.UUCP>, john@wa3wbu.UUCP (John Gayman) writes:
>   I have been having a repeating problem recently with loosing inodes
> in my News file system.

You describe both my system and my problem exactly, there was a post
a few days ago to this group about what the problem is (inode allocation
bug in System V) but the fix requires source access.  I have a kludge
which keeps the problem under control.  When I start unpacking I also
start a job which creates and deletes ~dozen files on the news file
system every 2 minutes, checking every 10-20 minutes to see if
rnews is stil running (ps & fgrep).  There is a 3.1 uPort system, but
Microport seems to finally gone completely belly up, their BBS is
disconnected again, and as soon as office hours start, their phone is
taken off the hook.  I don't know if 3.1 fixes the problem but if anyone
out there knows how to get it I would love to try.

In a nutshell, the problem occurs when the last inode has been allocated
from the inode list in the super block, if a file is deleted at that point,
its inode is placed in the free list, when it is allocated the following search
for inodes only goes from the start of the list to that point.  The kludge
above involves making sure that the free list end and search occur without
a delete between, i.e. the number of files created should be greater than the
number of articles unbatched during the sleep time.  There is still a failure
window, but the probability is reduced.

Again, if anyone out there knows how to get the 3.1 update, either from
uPort or whoever is tending their affairs, please let us know!
-- 
Pete Wilcox		...gatech!nanovx!techwood!paldn!pwilcox