slight emergency here...

[Gary Kline]

On Mon, Oct 29, 2007 at 12:03:06AM +0100, Roland Smith wrote:
> On Sun, Oct 28, 2007 at 01:54:54PM -0800, Gary Kline wrote:
> > 	Guys,
> > 
> > 
> > 	I think I've found the reason for the intermittent rashes.
> > 	Part of /var is bad, and fsck cannot allocate inoinfo to repair
> > 	the damage.
> 
> Oops. If fsck can't fix it, that's not good. Have you tried running fsck
> by hand, i.e. without -p? If you run it from the console it can fix a
> bit more than when running in preen mode, but this may result in data loss.
>  
> > 	At any rate, how do i as root, single user, cp -rp all of /var to
> > 	elsewhere (/storage) and rmdir /var, them mkdir /var and copy
> > 	everything back?? I've forgotten the cpio magic command. 
> 
> Make sure that the hardware isn't broken. If you have (S)ATA disks, use
> 'smartctl -a /dev/<yourdevice>'.
> 
> The canonical way to make backups is to use dump(8). Unmount /var and
> use 'dump -0 -a -f <dumpfile>'. 
> 
> But if the filesystem is really hosed, it might not be possible to copy
> everything. In that case make a copy with dd of the partition that /var
> is on so you can try to save any data that has not been backed up.
> 
> Probably the safest way to go is to newfs the filesystem that /var is on and
> restore your latest backup.
> 
> Roland



	Thanks, all of you.   This started as a way to keep rsync to work
	from tihs "tao" to my new tao[2].  tao2 has /usr/home/kline
	rather htan /home/kline. <blah, blah>...  I was hacking a script
	when things suddenly locked up tight.  Then the panic and
	reboot, but this time, fsck stumbled on allocating 2.3G of
	inoinfo.

	Long story short, I tar'd /var into a huge /store file.  Finally
	was ble to remove /var/empty/ ....  I'm still madly typing at
	shtuff.    Forgot about the -p preen swing in fsck even tho I'e
	ported fsck many times.  

	I'd like peoples' thought on whether the in-ability to write in
	/var could be what's been causing the Dell to spontaneously
	reboot at least weekly.  Or is it more likely heat and I need to
	have new fans installed?

	UPDATE: (I thought I had mailed this last night).  I have
	successfully moved /usr/home to /home, newfs /dev/<[home], and 
	tar'd everything to, fro.  Now gnome fails.

	thanks again,

	gary


> -- 
> R.F.Smith                                   http://www.xs4all.nl/~rsmith/
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-- 
  Gary Kline  kline at thought.org   www.thought.org  Public Service Unix
      http://jottings.thought.org   http://transfinite.thought.org