geoff@desint.UUCP (Geoff Kuenning) (01/24/85)
I have a single-user desktop machine. One of my .cshrc aliases is the following: alias s sync \; sync I also run a pseudo-job-control program that gives me four tty ports on my console. My standard shutdown procedure is to shift to each suffix in turn, checking to be sure I don't have an editor running or something, and typing 's' in each one. I finish in the suffix I use for superuser work, and in that I type 's' at least once, and frequently four or five times. Then I run a little program that reads a file in /etc, executes a sync(2) primitive, and runs an ioctl on each disk to move the arm to the shipping position. All well and good, right? Well, this morning when I booted, fsck found an unconnected inode on the root filesystem. I reconnected it, and checked it out -- it contained a sort temp file that was at least an hour old at the time of the boot. Now /etc/init does a sync every five minutes, not to mention all the sync's I did before shutdown. Yet the disk was left in an inconsistent state. Why? -- Geoff Kuenning ...!ihnp4!trwrb!desint!geoff