> o What causes the 'directory vnode nnn: invalid entry' errors? Is this
> a known bug? Is it fixed in 3.4?
>
> o Is it prudent to fsck and salvage all partitions on an AFS fileserver
> periodically? If so, how often?
>
> o What is so special about '.gopherrc'? (It is possible that it is one
> of the first files written to new home directory volumes.)
First off, we get this all the time too and I believe its normal behavior.
Here is whats happening:
An application opens file for logging errors and holds the descriptor open.
It doesn't have errors to log to it, so the first write has never occurred.
Chances are it will never have any errors to log, so basically the first block
of data for the file has not been sent to the fileserver.
Now lets look behind the scenes. When the file is created and opened for
writing, the fileserver allocates a directory entry for the file and inserts
it into the directory structure. For efficiency reasons, it waits until the
first block of data has arrived before it allocates the file vnode. Thus,
when the fileserver is salvaged, you have a directory entry with no
corresponding vnode and the salvager doesn't know what to do with it other
than delete it.
Probably what should happen is there should be some sort of initial state set
so that the salvager can recognize the condition and simply ignore it.
Mark Giuffrida
Univeristy of Michigan, CAEN
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
