hard reset impacts on ufs file system

[Dieter BSD]

>> Hard reset examined on freebsd 8.3. after reboot libncurses.so.8 was 0
>> byte.

Are there any complaints in /var/log/* ?  e.g. from fsck, or about
the disk/controller?

> My original guess as to why this seemed to always happen to
> libraries was that the system damaged their entries when
> attempting to update the atime on the files.

Plenty of other files get accessed, and thus their atimes updated.
If this is common for libraries but not other files, then the
cause is likely something else.

I've been using FFS since 1984 and I don't recall ever seeing a file
get truncated to 0 length.  SCSI, PATA, SATA, and those horrid USB-to-
*ATA bridges that do not let you turn off the disk's write cache.
Note that PATA does not do error checking on the address, so it can in
theory write the correct data to the wrong sector.  No SSD.  Never
turned off atime.