Disappearing Inodes -- One More Time

[Calvin Hayden]

Ok, I know that this is old hat, but here goes -- once again the
disappearing inode question.  I wanted to avoid this, but I missed
the original postings, and never got replies when the last postings
on the topic went out several weeks ago.

Sorry, but here goes...

We have a Vax 8600 running Sys V R2 V2.  We are running netnews 2.10.
Occasionally, I'll come in in the morning, do a 'df', and lo and behold
/usr/spool/news will have 1 free inode.  This morning I came in and
/usr/spool/news had dropped from 41952 free blocks / 4061 free inodes
as of 10:30 last night to 37016 free blocks / 1 free inode as of 9am
this morning.  We are set up in cron to allow dialout to get out news
feed beginning at 11pm.  /usr/spool/news is a mount point.  The problem
is not consistant, and moving the file system from 1 partition to another
has not relieved the problem.  To rectify the situation, I unmount the
file system, fsck it ( which reveals free inode cnt wrong in sblock ) to
fix the problem, and mount it again -- all now looks normal again.  As of
10:40am, /usr/spool/news is now showing 37016 free blocks / 3173 free inodes.

This is the only file system that the problem occurs on, out of the
14 file systems that are normally mounted.  Problem seems to indicate
that it is associated with our news feed in some way.  Is there a known
bug in the netnews version we have?  Is there a fix that I can apply?
Any suggestions?  Am I SOL? Please don't refer to old postings, I dont have 
these lying around to look at.  I'm going on vacation beginning May 19, so 
please email replies to me unless they bounce.  My stand-in will check the
comp.unix.questions and comp.unix.wizards while I'm gone to pick up any
posts that I may not get email from.  Thanks in advance!

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Calvin Hayden                        |    \_  / ___
Texas Instruments               _____|     __/__   |
Johnson City, TN.               \_          /       \
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