fsck locks up SMP system (5.3-REL)

[O. Hartmann]

Marco Beishuizen schrieb:

> On stardate Wed, 22 Dec 2004, the wise O. Hartmann entered:
>
>> Please try to boot your system in single user mode (type '4' in the 
>> start screen, where the countdown can be watched)
>> an do a 'fsck -y'. Then watch whether your box gets stuck or.
>> If it also get stuck in single user mode, please report again. I'm 
>> very interestes in this!
>
>
> Thanks for the reply,
>
> In single user mode it didn't get stuck and it looks like it repaired 
> some things. In the /usr, /home and /var filesystems "lost+found" 
> directories were created with some files in them. Also a 
> "fsck_snapshot"-file was created in /home/.snap/
>
> Now I'm curious what to do with the files in the lost+found 
> directories; can I delete them safely or do I have to do something 
> with it? Are the filesystems really repaired and ok again or will the 
> system crash some day because some files are still broken?
>
> The system works again but I'm not very confident it stays this way. 
> I'm thinking of installing 4.10-R again.
>
> Marco
>
Dear Marco.
Thanks. In my case, FreeBSD 5.3 dies in single user mode on nearly each 
disk activity (it is obviously a FreeBSD 5.3-issue with
my ASUS CUR-DLS based system).

Please take a look at fsck_ffs(8) man page. There is at the end of the 
description of the options an explanation of the lost+find facility. 
Obviously orphaned files and directories (and in most cases those which 
are expected to be some of them) are gathered and reconnected in 
lost+found. My 'periodic' cron-job deletes the contents of lost+found 
every 7 days.
Oliver