Syncing inodes in 4.3 BSD (was 4.3 BSD VAX 11/750 does not seem to sync its disks)

[Bob Brankley]

In article <271 at usfvax1.UUCP>, brankley at usfvax1.UUCP (Bob Brankley) writes:
> 
> It seems that 4.3 BSD is not periodically syncing in core inodes out to
> disk, resulting in crashes.
> ... 
> I originally found the problem when my nightly "fsck" of the file system
> detected multiple UNREFerenced files ...

First of all I would like to thank all of those who responded to my original
posting.  Yes, I do (NOW) realize that you should not run fsck on a
mounted file system.  One of my local friends told me about that.  That
is how I came about looking for incore inodes.

Let me rephrase this as a question.  Just how often is the kernal
supposed to sync incore inodes that belong to deleted files? The inodes
I have problems with belong to files that have not been running/nor have
existed for DAYS.  My concern is that IF the machine crashes these files
WILL BE truly unreferenced.  Do sync(2) and update(8) flush old incore
inodes? If not, who does? Are incore inodes supposed to be flushed
immediately after the file they reference is removed and has each
instance out of memory?  Why does this not seem to happen on my 4.2
(SunOS 3.5) SUN's?

Once again, I would like to thank all who reply ahead of time.


Bob Brankley
University of South Florida, Engineering Computer Services
CSNET:  usfvax1!brankley at usf.edu
UUCP:   {ihnp4!codas, gatech}!usfvax2!usfvax1!brankley