From: utzoo!decvax!genradbo!linus!smk
Newsgroups: net.unix-wizards,net.news
Title: squish
Article-I.D.: linus.950
Posted: Sun Dec 26 14:58:12 1982
Received: Mon Dec 27 05:55:16 1982

	A couple of hints on using squish.  On 4.1, don't try to squish
directories where daemons are running.  For instance, comsat starts
off by doing a
chdir("/usr/spool/mail");
If /usr/spool/mail is squished, comsat will point to a directory in limbo.
Furthermore, the old /usr/spool/mail is unlinked successfully, but
as with any UNIX file, it doesn't disappear because comsat had it open.
A fsck will find an unreferenced directory (which is the old /usr/spool/mail
and can be thrown away).  As long as you throw away the unreferenced directory,
everything is OK.  The new /usr/spool/mail is still created and is
correct, but a new comsat should be started to deal with the real (new)
/usr/spool/mail.

The moral is that squish should be run by rc before any daemons are
started.  Otherwise, you should be very careful of running squish.
One suggestion may be to mount the affected file system on another
path temporarily and do the squish.