>Date: Thu, 20 Feb 1997 06:56:37 -0600
>From: steve farrell <sfarrell@healthquiz.com>
>
>--sorry-- not trying to be obnoxious, but i didn't get any responses
>to this when i sent it a couple of days ago.  i'm thinking maybe
>it never really made it to the list (?), or am i just coming from
>another planet here? thanks for your help & time.

Your first message made it to the list, but probably no one was able
to figure out an answer.  You are more likely to get a response if you
include all of the details, as you have in your second message.

>incidentally, the machine in question was up for about a month without
>incident, albeit under relatively light load (email, dns, light web,
>user-ftp).  but when generating these core dumps, i actually got a panic!
>i was very surprised.  here's the trace:

Nothing ranlib can do should mangle your filesystems.  It's more
likely that something else is the original source of the problem, and
it was the pre-existing filesystem damage that caused ranlib to dump
core in the first place:

>Feb 18 03:27:55 xxxxxxxx /netbsd: /usr: bad dir ino 42276 at offset 0: mangled entry
>Feb 18 03:27:55 xxxxxxxx /netbsd: panic: bad dir

>Feb 18 03:28:04 xxxxxxxx /netbsd: /dev/sd0a: file system not clean; please fsck(8)

>so... what's the moral here?  is my kernel screwed up?  my disk?  also,
>with respect to ranlib core dumps (assuming they're unrelated to this
>panic...)  should i grab the ar and ranlib from -current?  is there a
>known-bug in the 1.2 distribution here?

The root filesystem on your sd0 disk is hosed, and needs to be fsck'ed.
Is there any particular reason why /etc/rc does not fsck your disks
automatically?  If /fastboot exists, nuke it.

Regardless, you should shutdown to single user *now* and run:

# sync
# fsck /dev/rsd0a
# reboot

>btw -- i should probably just read up on this, but do y'all have a way
>to track bugfixed sources like freebsd-stable, or only the -current stuff?

We don't have a -stable branch like FreeBSD's.  Hopefully, a jumbo
patch will be released soon which will fix some of the more glaring
misfeatures in 1.2.
-- 
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