SUMMARY: 4.0F vdump quota.user quota.group: Hung archive

From: Nigel Gall <nigelg_at_ppsl.com>
Date: Thu, 13 Jan 2000 13:25:34 -0400

This is a first draft summary of responses received so far.

Thanks to:
- Dr. Tom Blinn
- Bennet Fauber
- Robert Honore
- Nikola Milutinovic

The first three explained that the quota files are sparse files, i.e. the
file size shown with ls -l is not reflective of the number of mapped pages.
Or put another way, the file is spread as fragments located all over the
filesystem, not as one contiguous lump. Hence, since the ls command
allegedly uses the difference between the starting and concluding bytes, the
size of the quota files obtained from the ls command will not be a correct.

According to Dr. Blinn, if one reviews the Release Notes for 4.0F, one would
get a description of the quota files. He said it's possible that the reason
the size value seems so large is probably due to someone with a large UID
wrote a file somewhere in the root filesystem and the quota entry wound up
at what looks like a large offset in the file.

They all suggested running the /sbin/advfs/verify command on it; I did this
before, but never after booting from the OS boot CD and mounting the
filesystem to some other mount point (like /mnt). I'll try this.

I also tried dismounting the NT-based NFS filesystem and then performing the
archive. In the past this did not matter. Well, it still doesn't matter;
the vdump displayed the saem behaviour.

I'll provide a second summary after I've performed the verify (need to
schedule downtime; hopefully by next week).

Best regards,

Edmund Nigel Gall
Senior Information Systems Specialist
Process Plant Services Limited
Atlantic Avenue, Point Lisas Industrial Estate
Point Lisas, Couva, Trinidad & Tobago, W.I.
Tel: (868) 636 2906 x 274 Fax: (868) 679 3770

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Nigel Gall
> Sent: 2000 January 11 3:54 PM
> To: 'Tru64 UNIX Managers'
> Subject: 4.0F vdump quota.user quota.group: Hung archive
>
> Happy New Year everyone!
>
> Platform: AlphaServer 4100
> OS: Tru64 UNIX 4.0F (no patch kit installed)
>
> Problem Description:
>
> On 1999Dec23 we performed 1999-to-2000 rollover, 2000Feb28-to-2000Feb29
> and application tests on this server. Before beginning the tests, I
> performed archives of all the mounted filesystems (which are AdvFS
> filesystems) using vdump. After completing the tests, I switched to
> single-user mode and restored the filesystems one after the other (first
> ran /sbin/bcheckrc to mount the filesystems) after restoring the date to
> 1999Dec23. Everything seemed fine.
>
> On 1999Dec31, I was performing year-end system archives using vdump again.
> All the filesystems were successfully archived except the root filesystem.
> The tape lights would be active for about a minute and then it would go
> out and there would be no responses or messages from the vdump program
> (which normally writes a status update every five minutes or so). I
> eventually had to abort this archive (retried many times; always the same
> behaviour) and use tar to selectively archive files and subdirectories in
> root.
>
> Upon examining my filesystems, I discovered that the sizes of the
> quota.user and quota.group files in the root filesystem were both as
> follows:
>
> # ls -l quota.*
> 5 -rw-r----- 1 root operator 137438953472 Dec 23 23:20 quota.group
> 4 -rw-r----- 1 root operator 137438953472 Dec 23 23:20 quota.user
>
> If the size is meaninful, then this cannot be true, for the size of my
> root filesystem is approx 256MB as shown below:
>
> # df -k
> Filesystem 1024-blocks Used Available Capacity Mounted on
> root_domain#root 256000 76491 173328 31% /
> /proc 0 0 0 100% /proc
> usr_domain#usr 2048000 465309 1560528 23% /usr
> dom1#tdocs_fs 1886040 3741 1875632 1% /tdocs
> dom1#Docs_fs 1886040 40 1875632 1% /Docs
> dom2#home_fs 2048000 688967 1348768 34% /home
> dom3#usr5_fs 2048000 739954 1293680 37% /usr5
> dom4#dbahome_fs 2048000 1703008 325320 84% /dbahome
> dom5#spare_fs 2742272 2038347 687848 75% /spare
> dom5#tmp_fs 2742272 803 687848 1% /tmp
>
> I tried to remove the quota.user and quota.group files but I got
> Permission denied error. I can rename them. Does anyone have any idea
> what went wrong and how do I fix it? Should I have booted from the OS
> Boot CD, escaped to the UNIX shell, recreated the AdvFS file domain,
> mounted it and then restored?
>
> Best regards,
>
> Edmund Nigel Gall
> Senior Information Systems Specialist
> Process Plant Services Limited
> Atlantic Avenue, Point Lisas Industrial Estate
> Point Lisas, Couva, Trinidad & Tobago, W.I.
> Tel: (868) 636 2906 x 274 Fax: (868) 679 3770
>
Received on Thu Jan 13 2000 - 17:29:32 NZDT

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