PWD gives getwd: couldn't open .. on world r-x root directories

[Brad Clements]

Hi

We have a MicroVax II running the dec 28, 1988 release of
Mt. Xinu 4.3 BSD unix.

Over the past three months I created several new root level directories.
These directories are readable/executable by user,group and world.

Any normal user can cd to these directories, look at files and cd
to lower level directories. However the PWD command fails with
getwd: couldn't open ..  once in or below these directories.

yet all directories (. and ..) in each of these directories are
readable and executable by all.

Super user does not get this error.

I've looked at the i-node numbers, my untrained eye doesn't
detect anything peculiar. fsck runs w/ no errors.

Not all of the root level directories I've made have these problems. But
all those that do have these problems are at the root level, and
are the root directories of other partitions.

Find's weekly updatedb returns either 'bad status' (from lstat) or
'bad directory' on these directories.  It also returns bad status on
one root level file (genvmunix) which is readable and executable by
all!

An ls -d on /. and /.. both return   r-x for group and world.

Does anyone out there have any idea what's wrong with these directories?
Its irritating, but so far there doesn't appear to be anything else
wrong w/ the system.

Thanks for any ideas!

Brad Clements
Clarkson University