Date: Wed, 23 Jun 2010 20:10:13 +0200 From: Polytropon <freebsd@edvax.de> To: Kirk Strauser <kirk@strauser.com> Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: before i even =touch= my server again.... Message-ID: <20100623201013.07f68ad3.freebsd@edvax.de> In-Reply-To: <4C224C57.6000801@strauser.com> References: <20100623051418.GA80985@thought.org> <20100623183542.1d6aef45.freebsd@edvax.de> <4C224C57.6000801@strauser.com>
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On Wed, 23 Jun 2010 13:03:03 -0500, Kirk Strauser <kirk@strauser.com> wrote: > On 06/23/10 11:35, Polytropon wrote: > > Of course, all write attempts to /var will then fail. > > Or even worse: they'll succeeded. And then when you re-mount /var, > you'll lose access to all the files you've written in the mean time. True, an important advice. In case /var is not mounted, the /var directory on / will be just a "plain directory". Depending on program behaviour, it is possible that logging programs create a new file when missing a file to append. In this case, / will fill with such files in /var. It's important to remove them prior to re-mounting /var. It is possible to move them, e. g. to /tmp, and immediately append them to the correct files after re-mounting /var. But if (small) data loss is acceptable for the time needed to fix /var, it is an option. Another possibility is - but I never tried it - to force fsck to check a mounted partition that is in use. # fsck -yf /var This may (!) cause other forms of damage, allthough fsck should be able to correct most usual problems. It's a good approach to stop as many services as possible that could want to write to /var, and restart them after /var is clean and mounted again. -- Polytropon Magdeburg, Germany Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0 Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ...
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