Subject: Re: Case of the dissapearing files!
From: Steve Lord <lord@sgi.com>
To: Ravi Wijayaratne <ravi_wija@yahoo.com>
Cc: linux-xfs@oss.sgi.com
In-Reply-To: <20020620202550.87751.qmail@web13101.mail.yahoo.com>
References: <20020620202550.87751.qmail@web13101.mail.yahoo.com>
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Date: 20 Jun 2002 15:31:59 -0500
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On Thu, 2002-06-20 at 15:25, Ravi Wijayaratne wrote:
> Hi All,
> 
> I have an xfs root file system.
> 
> I increased the size of the inodes to 1024 by using
> mkfs -i size=1024 option. After that I see some of the
> newly created files in the "/" directory vanishing
> when I reboot the system gracefully. However the newly
> created  files in subdirectories are persistent
> accross
> reboots.
> 
> If I powercycle the system (ungraceful shutdown) the
> newly created files in the "/" directory appears.
> 
> I ran xfs_db to examine the inode of the root
> directory. I see that when I create a file (even non
> empty) the files info (inode num, name etc) does not
> appear in the inodes u.sfdir2.list[x].xxxx components.
> 
> My guess is that the file creation in the "/"
> directory
> gets registered in the xfs meta data logs but does not
> update the incore inode and hence when the system is
> shutdown does not write to the disk inodes. When the
> system is abruptly shutdown xfs_repair reinstates the
> files.
> 
> When I run xfs_repair -n on the root partition it
> complains about unlinked inodes.
> 
> Furthermore  /proc/slabinfo tells me that the object
> size is 436 bytes for the xfs_inode slab cache.
> 
> My questions are
> 
> (a). What is the maximum size for xfs_inode ? 1024 too
> big ? 
> 
> (b). Why is the behavior different for "/" directory.
> For instance "/tmp" or "/etc" works fine and I can
> create and delete files in these directories.


It does sound a little like the root inode is not getting
flushed during unmount. If your root directoy size is less
than 4K then it is all within the inode. Is this a recent
kernel?

Steve


-- 

Steve Lord                                      voice: +1-651-683-3511
Principal Engineer, Filesystem Software         email: lord@sgi.com