Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!bloom-beacon!gatech!mcnc!decvax!ucbvax!sdcsvax!nosc!humu!uhmanoa!aloha1!islenet!richard
From: richard@islenet.UUCP (Richard Foulk)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.att,comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: Wierd 3b inode problem with news.
Message-ID: <3626@islenet.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 7-Nov-87 23:52:18 EST
Article-I.D.: islenet.3626
Posted: Sat Nov  7 23:52:18 1987
Date-Received: Wed, 11-Nov-87 07:26:22 EST
References: <283@paisano.UUCP> <156@fesk.UUCP>
Reply-To: richard@islenet.UUCP (Richard Foulk)
Organization: Islenet Inc.,  Honolulu
Lines: 27
Xref: mnetor comp.sys.att:1706 comp.unix.wizards:5400

> 
> I have seen the same thing on an ICM3216 running SysV.2.2.
> The inode count of the spool file system (where news reside)
> will drop from 12000 to 0 within minutes (perhaps seconds) while
> unpacking a compressed news batch (rnews -U). Recourse is to go
> to single user mode and do an fsck on the file system. This will
> restore all (12000) lost inodes.  This scenario happens about
> once per month and I have not noticed a correlation with the
> news volume.

I've encountered this problem on a couple of Dual Systems orphaned
machines.  I always figured it was Unisofts or Duals fault.

It seems to be dependent on the ratio of free blocks to free inodes
or something like that.  Whenever the problem comes back I often
have to do the umount/fsck/mount/unbatch cycle several times before
it will settle down and stop running out of inodes.  Then the problem
will often stay away for weeks or months.

I vaguely remember hearing something about some race condition in
the kernel allowing this to happen, but I thought that had been
fixed long ago.


-- 
Richard Foulk		...{dual,vortex,ihnp4}!islenet!richard
Honolulu, Hawaii