[123288] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: Cisco hardware question
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (gordon b slater)
Thu Mar 4 18:54:35 2010
X-IP-MAIL-FROM: gordslater@ieee.org
From: gordon b slater <gordslater@ieee.org>
To: Brielle Bruns <bruns@2mbit.com>
In-Reply-To: <4B904668.4020305@2mbit.com>
Date: Thu, 04 Mar 2010 23:54:11 +0000
Cc: nanog@nanog.org
Reply-To: gordslater@ieee.org
Errors-To: nanog-bounces+nanog.discuss=bloom-picayune.mit.edu@nanog.org
On Thu, 2010-03-04 at 16:46 -0700, Brielle Bruns wrote:
> fsck is not just for failing hard drives. fsck is used any time you
> want to check a disk (may it be ssd, optical, magnetic) for any kind of
> errors or inconsistencies. It's a standard part of any UNIX toolkit.
>
> On Linux systems with ext2/3, you'll see lost+found, which is where
> stuff ends up if it can't be connected to an actual file entry. Sounds
> exactly like what those FSCK files are - DOS used to do this with scandisk.
>
beat me to it by a minute or two :)
I'd guess (from a *nix-yness background) that the appliance is set up to
automatically fsck a disk if it's dirty - `dirtiness` can be caused by
thing like unexpected power cut as well as nasty things like hardware
troubles. Appliances are prone to "power pulls" as they are usually
headless.
Some "diskless" appliances don't even bother to check , somewhat
dismayingly.
Not sure what the exact fs is on those boxes - anyone happen to know? -
but from experience, I wouldn't be worrying too much (though I'd be very
curious of course).
Gord
--
snort, snort, oink, oink
