>Date: Mon, 7 Apr 1997 15:28:40 +0100
>From: Jon Ribbens <jon@oaktree.co.uk>
>
>Can anyone recommend a good instruction manual for fsck? The
>manpage is, as usual, not very helpful. fsck itself, while
>running, has a tendency to report incomprehensible errors,
>followed by asking unanswerable questions. ("REMOVE y/n". So,
>what happens if I say "yes"? What happens if I say "no"? Do
>I *need* to say "yes" in order for the disk to be fixed? What
>bad things might happen with either choice? Why is it even
>asking me - what problem has it found?)

Have you looked at /usr/share/doc/*/*.fsck_ffs ?

I don't recall if fsck(8) is generic or if it is still an alias of
fsck_ffs(8); you may have better luck if you read fsck_ffs(8).

>We just got a whole load of fsck errors (requiring a manual fsck)
>from a NetBSD 1.2 machine with nobody at all logged in which was
>rebooted unexpectedly. Surely this must indicate a bug in either
>ffs or fsck? (I thought the point was fsck was supposed to be
>able to fix this sort of thing without help.)

There is no way for FFS to keep data on the disk 100% consistent all
of the time, because file metadata is scattered around different areas
of the disk.  If the machine loses power while FFS is in the middle of
updating file metadata, you will get errors like those you've seen.
fsck_ffs(8) can fix some errors by itself, but it can't fix all
possible errors by itself unless you make it an AI.
-- 
Mike Long <mike.long@analog.com>     <URL:http://www.shore.net/~mikel>
VLSI Design Engineer         finger mikel@shore.net for PGP public key
Analog Devices, CPD Division          CCBF225E7D3F7ECB2C8F7ABB15D9BE7B
Norwood, MA 02062 USA       (eq (opinion 'ADI) (opinion 'mike)) -> nil