[set of problems which sound like sbc vs ncr bugs]

> > I've formatted the drive multiple times and run block checks and
> > everything comes out okay. While I'm running the problem doesn't get worse
> > its only when shutting down and when leaving single user mode.
> 
> My memory is vague, but there is a kernel option that deals with turning
> the cache on or off, are you using a custom kernel or a generic.  Whoops
> back up there, you are using fsck to manually fix the disk?  As I recall
> and I am sure that some one will correct me if I am wrong, fsck
> uses the raw disk, bypassing the kernel buffer, if some of the bogus
> blocks that are getting fixed by fsck are already in the buffer cache,
> then when they get flush so will the changes fsck made to fix your disk.
> As I recall you have to use shutdown -n to shutdown with out flushing
> the disk buffer cache right after you twidle the disk with fsck.  Can
> someone else sanity check me that this is right.

Yes and no. If the filesystem is mounted read-write, you are correct.
If the fs is read-only, then the blocks WON'T get written to disk (since
it's read-only there's no way they can differ from what's on the disk :-)

That's why root's r/o when you fire up single-user. So you can fsck the
root partition.

Take care,

Bill