*BSD News Article 72549


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From: t.d.g.sandford@prds-grn.demon.co.uk (Thomas D.G. Sandford)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: mountmsdosfs() question
Date: 30 Jun 1996 15:34:58 GMT
Organization: Paradise Green Technical Services
Lines: 27
Message-ID: <4r66r2$1uu@prds-grn.demon.co.uk>
References: <4qpkb1$le6@pier2.bayarea.net>
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David McNab (mcnab@bayarea.net) wrote:
:      When I mount one of my MS-DOS partitions on my
: FreeBSD 2.1 machine, I get the message:

: Jun 25 13:57:16 mcnab /kernel: mountmsdosfs(): root directory is not a multipleof the clustersize in length

:      Is this something I should worry about?  Is it
: something I can fix?

Be afraid - be very afraid, and take the partition out of your /etc/fstab
*AT ONCE* . 

This message indicates a problem which *can* result in the total trashing
of your FFS partitions when a find operation is done on your DOS
partition (as occurs in /etc/weekly). This can occur *EVEN IF THE MSDOS
PARTITION IS MOUNTED READ ONLY*.

I believe the error message mainly occurs with a disk that has been 
partitioned in a "non-standard" way (e.g. fips), but it can occur even
with a brand new disk partitioned with fdisk.

The newer msdos disk code may fix this problem (I don't know - I'm
still running 2.1R as well).

--
Thomas Sandford | t.d.g.sandford@prds-grn.demon.co.uk
Paradise Green Technical Services: S'ware/Hw design and Theatre Tech. Services