Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Path: utzoo!mnetor!seismo!sundc!hadron!jsdy
From: jsdy@hadron.UUCP (Joseph S. D. Yao)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards,comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: panic: ifree: freeing free inode  HEELLLPPPP!
Message-ID: <294@hadron.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 11-Dec-86 22:32:50 EST
Article-I.D.: hadron.294
Posted: Thu Dec 11 22:32:50 1986
Date-Received: Sun, 14-Dec-86 19:17:40 EST
References: <1192@dataio.UUCP>
Reply-To: jsdy@hadron.UUCP (Joseph S. D. Yao)
Distribution: net
Organization: Hadron, Inc., Fairfax, VA
Lines: 20
Summary: Are you fsck'ing a running disk?
Xref: mnetor comp.unix.wizards:336 comp.unix.questions:332

In article <1192@dataio.UUCP> braman@dataio.UUCP (Rick Braman) writes:
>dev = 0xd, ino = 12327, fs = /usr/spool
>panic: ifree: freeing free inode

I saw this fairly regularly on a system with which I work, and
was mystified.  (Ultrix 1.1 on Vaxen.)  It turned out that the
operators, to do backup, just turned the modems off and did an
fsck and dump.  They rather blindly answered "yes" to each and
every question.  When they were instructed to bring the systems
all the way down before doing any of this (and then forced to
by some cleverer software), these disappeared.

The problem was, of course, that BSD has at least a dozen back-
ground processes working hard to corrupt the disk at all times.
Usually, of course, they are helpful: but to fsck, they are just
corruption.
-- 

	Joe Yao		hadron!jsdy@seismo.{CSS.GOV,ARPA,UUCP}
			jsdy@hadron.COM (not yet domainised)