> following mycroft's advice, i turned off doreallocblks. i then built
> X11, which usually causes a couple of FS problems. they didn't happen,
> this time.

Unfortunately I can't report the same good results.  I edited vfs_cluster.c to
turn off doreallocblks, built (using sources supped yesterday) and booted a new
kernel and then ran a perl script I wrote that previously relatively reliably
triggered FS corruption.  It still does... :-(

I've enclosed a copy of the script on the off-chance that someone else who has
been having this problem might like to try running it.  Note: I accept no
responsibility for any damage to file systems that this script causes!

Duncan

--- cut here ---

#!/usr/local/bin/perl
#
# Running this script on my netbsd 1.0-beta system, on an i386 eventually (it
# varies, but usually in less than half an hour) results in a newly copied
# file and the file it was copied from being different (as detected by cmp),
# indicating some form of file system corruption has occured.
#

srand;

#
# None of the directories in the following list can have subdirectories,
# otherwise the wildcard expansion messes up.
#
@srclist = (`ls /usr/bin/* /usr/sbin/* /usr/X386/bin/*`);

#
# Create the following directories.  If you want to give your disk a really
# good work out, you could create them in different parts of the file system,
# increasing the chance that they will end up in different cylinder groups,
# thus causing more head movement...
#
@dstdirs = ("test1", "test2", "test3");

for (;;) {

        $sleeptime = int (rand (3));
        $delaytime = int (rand (25)) + 1;

        #
        # pick random src
        #
        $fileindex = int (rand ($#srclist + 1));
        chop($srcfile = $srclist[$fileindex]);
        ($dir, $file) = $srcfile =~ m?(/.*)/([^/]+)?;

        #
        # pick random destination
        #
        $dstindex = int (rand ($#dstdirs + 1));
        $randext  = int(rand(32767));
        $dstfile  = "$dstdirs[$dstindex]/$file.$randext";

        $cmd = "(cp $srcfile $dstfile; " .
                "if cmp $srcfile $dstfile; then " .
                    "sleep $delaytime; rm $dstfile; " .
                "else " .
                    "echo \007Done!!!; kill $$;" .
                "fi) &";

        system($cmd);

        print "cp $srcfile -> $dstfile\n";
        sleep($sleeptime);
}