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From: del@fnx.UUCP (Dag Erik Lindberg)
Newsgroups: news.misc,news.software.b,comp.sources.bugs,comp.bugs.sys5,comp.unix.i386
Subject: Out of inodes while unbatching news
Keywords: Help!
Message-ID: <586@fnx.UUCP>
Date: 2 Jul 90 20:55:11 GMT
Distribution: na
Organization: I/Ovations    Kirkland, WA
Lines: 53

First, let me appologize for the multiple cross posting. I would not do this
were it not for the unusual situation I find myself in.  If I hit a group
that is inappropriate, please ignore this message.

In a nutshell: When news is unbatching, at some point the number of free
inodes suddenly goes to zero, and the news starts trying to fill the bit
bucket on the floor.  Killing rnews, unmounting the file system, fsck'ing,
and remounting brings back the free inodes.  The problem occurs at a random
time, from a hundred articles to a couple of thousand articles.  The problem
does not occur with any other software I have tried which uses up large
quantities of inodes.  (For example "find comp -print | cpio -pdvm" into
another directory on the news file system will happily use all the inodes
without exhibiting the problem.)  I am not aware of any way that a user
program such as rnews can corrupt the free inode table.

The details: The system is a Mylex 20 Mhz w/64k cache, 8 MB memory, ATI
VGA wonder.  I have unbatched news with no serial ports installed in the
system, same problem.  I have tried a DTC RLL card, WD 7000 FASST SCSI card,
Adaptec 1542 SCSI, and all have shown the same problem.  I am currently
running ISC Unix.  I have stripped down the system to just the video card
and the disk controller to try to find this problem.

Having heard some rumors of Mylex motherboards being unreliable running
Unix, I have come close to deciding that the M.B. is the problem, but
for the following reasons I am hesitant to shell out for a new M.B.:
 - I have pounded the system hard for up to 2 weeks with *NO* other
   problems.  "Hard" means 3 virtual screens active, 1 running VPIX (I
   can keep several logins pretty active), and typically 2 users (not
   myself) logged in on serial lines, 1 of them running VPIX on a Wyse60,
   and uucp traffic doing mail, news, etc.  With this load swapping starts
   occurring even with 8 MB of memory.
 - Mylex claims they have fixed their early problems with running Unix, and
   my M.B. should work.
 - If I 'fix' the file system by saving all data, mkfs, then restore, I can
   run rnews and it will chug along until it is done or *legitimately* runs
   out of inodes.  The problem does not show up until I have run expire on
   the news file system!
 - This one I have not tried but twice, so I am not sure it is repeatable,
   but I forced a rebuild of the free list using fsck, and shutdown the
   system.  After booting I again ran rnews with no problems, until I
   run rnews.

I am desperate at this point, having spent unbelievable numbers of hours
on this problem.  I just want to get it fixed, but have exhausted all my
ideas.  If anyone has ever seen anything like this before, *please* drop
me a line via E-mail.  Use Email as my news system is totally unreliable
right now.  I'm only one hop away from uunet if you use the path below.
Thanks in advance!


-- 
del AKA Erik Lindberg                             uunet!pilchuck!fnx!del
                          Who is John Galt?