From owner-freebsd-questions Fri Sep 19 01:02:07 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) id BAA23185 for questions-outgoing; Fri, 19 Sep 1997 01:02:07 -0700 (PDT) Received: from freebie.lemis.com (gregl1.lnk.telstra.net [139.130.136.133]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) with ESMTP id BAA23175 for ; Fri, 19 Sep 1997 01:02:01 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from grog@localhost) by freebie.lemis.com (8.8.7/8.8.5) id RAA00742; Fri, 19 Sep 1997 17:31:30 +0930 (CST) Message-ID: <19970919173130.36808@lemis.com> Date: Fri, 19 Sep 1997 17:31:30 +0930 From: Greg Lehey To: jfielden@geocities.com Cc: FreeBSD Questions Subject: Re: Warning message, what does it mean? References: <3421E6FC.3C97F979@ms11.hinet.net> <19970919134926.56921@lemis.com> <3420B71B.415273F1@lazy.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 0.81e In-Reply-To: <3420B71B.415273F1@lazy.org>; from Joshua Fielden on Thu, Sep 18, 1997 at 01:07:39AM -0400 Organisation: LEMIS, PO Box 460, Echunga SA 5153, Australia Phone: +61-8-8388-8250 Fax: +61-8-8388-8250 Mobile: +61-41-739-7062 WWW-Home-Page: http://www.lemis.com/~grog Fight-Spam-Now: http://www.cauce.org Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk On Thu, Sep 18, 1997 at 01:07:39AM -0400, Joshua Fielden wrote: > Greg Lehey wrote: >> >> On Fri, Sep 19, 1997 at 10:44:12AM +0800, Doug Lo wrote: >>> Hi, >>> >>> When I boot FreeBSD, I got a warning message as below: >>> >>> mountmsdosfs(): Warning: root directory is not a multiple of the >>> clustersize in length. >>> >>> Would anyone tell me what it means? >> >> Well, the immediate meaning is obvious. >> >>> Should I notice it? >> >> Bearing in mind the flaky condition of msdosfs, I'd be very careful. >> I don't know if things have improved, since I don't use Microsoft, but >> there were times when anomalies in the file system structure could >> cause msdosfs to overwrite not only its own partition, but also >> neighbouring ones. If you must mount the file system, do it >> read-only, at least until somebody more knowledgeable than I tells you >> that the coast is clear. > > I got this after I used "FIPS" to shrink a DOS partition to install BSD. > It's got to ddo with the trick of fooling the drive into shrinking the > partition but not recalculating clusters. reformat> If you used Partition Magic, FIPS, etc to shrink a DOS > partition, I wouldn't worry too much. This is exactly the situation I was referring to. If I were you, I'd worry. FIPS doesn't do a perfect job, and it leaves pointers outside the slice. If you're unlucky, msdosfs will use one of these pointers and place random garbage in other slices. Greg