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file corruption with Vms 7.2-2

 
Ian Miller.
Honored Contributor

Re: file corruption with Vms 7.2-2

See DFU DELETE for the fast way of deleting a directory containing lots of files.
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Purely Personal Opinion
Jess Goodman
Esteemed Contributor

Re: file corruption with Vms 7.2-2

Almost all the errors that show up in your ANALYZE/DISK output are normal and to be expected since you ran it on an active volume without using the /REPAIR or /LOCK qualifiers.

If you investigate I'm sure you will find that the files mentioned in the BADDIRENT, BAD_FIDSEQ, and BAD_DIRFIDSEQ messags were being created and/or deleted while you were running ANAL/DISK. You might also get them for old files if the system crashed, etc. while those files were being created or deleted, but /REPAIR will fix those.

Likewise the errors ALLOCCLR, or its cousins ALLOCSET and DUALLOC, will occur on an active volume. I'm not sure about the ALLOCEXT message but it might also be normal when multitple file headers are involved.

Tbe DELHEADER message is normal even with the disk locked if a file has been marked for delete on close but is still open by an application.

On the other hand I'm not sure why you would get the BADNAMEFORM or BADHEADER messages unless those particular file headers were corrupted.

Bottom line: ANAL/DISK without /REPAIR or DFU VERIFY without /FIX (or /LOCK) are both pretty useless for detecting file corruption on a volume with file activity.

I've always wondered if it would be possible to first scan the volume without /LOCKing it, make a list of *potential* problems, and then do a quick lock/check/unlock for each problem in the list.

This approach wouldn't work for ALLOCCLR errors since you would have to rescan the entire index file to confirm the problem, but ALLOCLCR is just lost space, not real corruption anyway.

However it should allow a real quick check (in terms of how long the volume is locked) for whether ALLOCSET, DUALLOC, BADDIRENT, BAD_FIDSEQ and some other errors detected during an unlocked pass were real errors or not.

I realize this approach would give some false negatives since a real problem with the storage bitmap can, on an active volume, migrate between various files and from being detected as ALLOCSET or as DUALLOC. Still this option would be an extremely valuable tool for detecting real disk corruption without locking large active volumes for several minutes - which is the only option available now
I have one, but it's personal.
Willem Grooters
Honored Contributor

Re: file corruption with Vms 7.2-2

Gerard,
probabbly a long shot but it may be of use.
A customer has reported severe file corruption in SAN, and investigation by HP (including DFU's author!) revealed a bug in DFU as defragmenter: in rare cases, bits in the bitmap were marked as free where the blocks were actually allocated to files. (it seems, as has been explained, that a bit set states a block MAY be allocated to a file, and DFU made the wrong assumption sometimes).
This has surely been fixed but I'm not sure if this new version is already available. I'm quite certain it will appear on the next freeware CD.
Willem Grooters
OpenVMS Developer & System Manager
Wim Van den Wyngaert
Honored Contributor

Re: file corruption with Vms 7.2-2

I wouldn't like to be the one that has to tell management that a corruption was caused by usage of freeware ...

Wim
Wim
Ian Miller.
Honored Contributor

Re: file corruption with Vms 7.2-2

DFU V3.1-1 is the latest and greatest. The problem was only when using the DFU DEFRAG command not VERIFY. V3.1-1 only runs on Alpha VMS V7.3-1 and later and I64 VMS V8.1 and later.
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Purely Personal Opinion
labadie_1
Honored Contributor

Re: file corruption with Vms 7.2-2

Hello

Willem: DFU (V 2.7) has only been used here by me with dfu verify, so this is not an issue. Thanks for the information.

Fassl: the directory are not so big, the biggest is 7 000 blocks, and a good number are between 500 and 3 000 blocks (which is very bad, but I have already seen much worse).

Goodman: it seems you are right, the files shown by ana/disk/norepair today were created today...
Ian Miller.
Honored Contributor

Re: file corruption with Vms 7.2-2

small note on DFU VERIFY.
I have noticed using
VERIFY/DIRECTORY_SCAN/LOCK
gives the most meaningful results but takes the longest to do. The author of DFU allows you the choice of tradoff. /NODIR is the default.
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Purely Personal Opinion
labadie_1
Honored Contributor

Re: file corruption with Vms 7.2-2

I will have a $ ana/disk/norepair with n o activity soon.

Tahnsk for the info Ian
Garry Fruth
Trusted Contributor

Re: file corruption with Vms 7.2-2

I am unable to open the .CWK attachments. What application creates these files?
Uwe Zessin
Honored Contributor

Re: file corruption with Vms 7.2-2

It's a ClarisWorks (or AppleWorks) document. Could be a text document, a spreadsheet or a database, ...

http://filext.com/detaillist.php?extdetail=CWK
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