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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!nntp.coast.net!news.kei.com!news.mathworks.com!tank.news.pipex.net!pipex!warwick!bham!bhamcs!news.ox.ac.uk!sable.ox.ac.uk!mbeattie From: mbeattie@sable.ox.ac.uk (Malcolm Beattie) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc,comp.os.linux.development.system Subject: Re: The better (more suitable)Unix?? FreeBSD or Linux Date: 19 Feb 1996 11:09:00 GMT Organization: Oxford University, England Lines: 58 Message-ID: <4g9loc$si0@news.ox.ac.uk> References: <4er9hp$5ng@orb.direct.ca> <JRICHARD.96Feb9101113@paradise.zko.dec.com> <4fnd50$h1f@news.ox.ac.uk> <4frg0s$1jv@park.uvsc.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: sable.ox.ac.uk Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc:14022 comp.os.linux.development.system:17623 In article <4frg0s$1jv@park.uvsc.edu>, Terry Lambert <terry@lambert.org> wrote: >mbeattie@sable.ox.ac.uk (Malcolm Beattie) wrote: > >[ ... block referenced by sync metadata write but async write ... ] > >] As a humorous but genuine example of that, I include a user's >] message (suitably anonymised) that we received after our 2100 >] (running Digital UNIX with the BSD FFS) crashed in December. >] >] > Date: Fri, 1 Dec 1995 15:20:20 GMT >] > From: J Random User <jruser> >] > Apparently-To: root >] > >] > I know funny things happen after crashes, but this is a new one on me. >] > My .pinerc file now contains lots of ascii pictures of cows. >] > Please can I have the old one back? >] > I haven't had time to look at many of the other files - do you think I should? >] > Thanks >] > >] > Random User >] >] We restored the user's real .pinerc from backup but another of our users >] must still be missing those cows. > >Clearly, someone anserwed "no" to "Clear?" during the fsck after >the crash. Not "clearly" at all and, in fact, wrong. Please stick to to the technical explanations you excel at and stop with the aspersion casting. >Or you are using an outdated set of recovery tools. We were (and are) using the recovery tools as supplied with OSF/1 3.0 (as was) and Digital UNIX 3.2c (as is). The example above was an example of a not uncommon occurrence; we also often find authcap files mixed up (with OSF/1 SIA security, there's a file /tcb/files/auth/u/username with the encrypted password and other stuff in it). Fortunately, one of the fields is u_name=username and so it's a nuisance rather than a security hole when /tcb/files/auth/f/foo turns out after a crash to hold the contents of what was /tcb/files/auth/b/bar. That doesn't mean, of course, that DEC's fsck is not outdated as recovery tools go and I think you're probably right with that as explanation. Since we're supposed to be talking filesystems here, I'll try to ask an intelligent question. Under Digital UNIX 3.2c, AdvFS is still funnelled to the master CPU on an SMP machine (fixed in 4.0, I believe). Is that because it's intrinsically hard to make a bitfile/extent-based filesystem SMB-safe or just because DEC are lazy? --Malcolm -- Malcolm Beattie <mbeattie@sable.ox.ac.uk> Oxford University Computing Services "Widget. It's got a widget. A lovely widget. A widget it has got." --Jack Dee