[ale] lost+found

Michael H. Warfield mhw at wittsend.com
Thu Oct 29 14:30:56 EST 1998


Jay Finch enscribed thusly:
> So I take it that removing the lost+found directory is a Bad Thing(tm)?

	It's a bad thing and you don't find out just how bad until you
really need it.  :-)  Primer cord for Murphies law.

> Oops.

> Jay

> At 01:41 PM 10/29/98 -0500, Daniel S Cox wrote:
> >Ben,
> >
> >	If you have the Edition VII (yeah, I'm showing my age) documents, one of
> >the articles in there explains what it's all about.
> >
> >	The skinny: when fsck runs, and happens to find an unattached file (an
> >inode entry that points to valid data and everything, but has no directory
> >entry), it'll put it in lost+found.  Since a directory is
> >'just-another-file' (at least to the file system), if there isn't room, it
> >would have to allocate a new block from the free list.  Well, if you're in
> >the middle of repairing the file system, this is a Bad Thing (TM).  So,
> >when the file system is created, lost+found is also created, and expanded
> >(by creating several dozen files, and then removing them).  Then, if fsck
> >must re-attach a file, it just enters the name and inode number in the
> >lost+found directory.
> >
> >	Clear as mud?
> >
> >Danny
> > 
> -----
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	Mike
-- 
 Michael H. Warfield    |  (770) 985-6132   |  mhw at WittsEnd.com
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