Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!rutgers!cmcl2!nrl-cmf!ames!pasteur!ucbvax!hplabs!pyramid!prls!mips!dce
From: dce@mips.COM (David Elliott)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: 4.3 BSD VAX 11/750 does not seem to sync its disks.
Keywords: Sync, In core inodes, etc.
Message-ID: <1967@quacky.mips.COM>
Date: 2 Apr 88 17:15:57 GMT
References: <271@usfvax1.UUCP> <10900@mimsy.UUCP>
Reply-To: dce@quacky.UUCP (David Elliott)
Organization: MIPS Computer Systems, Sunnyvale, CA
Lines: 25

In article <10900@mimsy.UUCP> chris@mimsy.UUCP (Chris Torek) writes:
>In article <271@usfvax1.UUCP> brankley@usfvax1.UUCP (Bob Brankley) writes:
>>I have been having a pretty wild problem on my VAX 11/750 running 4.3
>>BSD ....  I originally found the problem when my nightly "fsck" of the
>>file system detected multiple UNREFerenced files in the partition
>>containing my user files(/dev/ra0g).
>
>You cannot run fsck on an active file system.  Among other things,
>it should not be necessary.  Stop doing it.

Sadly, 4.3BSD comes this way.  /usr/adm/daily.sh (an otherwise great
way of doing periodic chores, superior to crontab, anyway) runs
/etc/fsck with the -n option.  Sure, the sync command is executed
first, but that doesn't guarantee anything at all.

When we first brought up 4.3BSD, we kept this new "feature".  After
a while, it got really annoying when we happened to be running news
expires at the same time.

As a side note, our next System V-based release contains a special
"periodic execution" interface for administrators, using an interface
similar to the rc directory interface in System V.  Anyone wanting
information can contact me.
-- 
David Elliott		dce@mips.com  or  {ames,prls,pyramid,decwrl}!mips!dce