fsck fails/lost+found questions

[Rod Roark]

I believe lost+found is used to hold unlinked files found by e2fsck.

A typical scenario is that some program is in the middle of creating a
new file for which an i-node and data blocks have been allocated, and
the machine crashes.  No directory entry (link) yet exists for this
string of allocated blocks, and so when you fsck they are put into
lost+found.

I'd just make a backup and then delete 'em.

-- Rod
   http://www.sunsetsystems.com/

On Fri, 04 Aug 2000, you wrote:
> I have a machine running a database that has crashed a number of times
> due to flaky power/UPS issues.  I know this is VERY bad and have since
> fixed it.  But that is not the point that I have a question about.
> Every time this machine crashed it would fail the fsck on startup to the
> point that I had to login and run fsck manually.  When running manually
> I get asked a lot of questions about deleting duplicate inodes and
> inodes with bad times (or something like that it has been a long time).
> Because I didn't know what else to do I just went with the default which
> was always Y.  After a while I went started adding a -y which just
> answers Y and doesn't even ask.  So now the big question that I have is
> what dammage has been gettin done and is there anything that can done
> about it?  Other than the obvious don't let the power fail or run a
> journaling filesystem.  I now have thousands of entries in my lost+found
> directory that I assume came from these filesystem scans as some kind of
> safety net.  But what could I do with them?  If there is no way for a
> mere mortal to use them is it safe to delete them?  They have seemingly
> random permissions, ownership, and timestamps so I am vary scared to do
> anything with them.  My guess is that they are essentially hard links to
> the block that was dammaged.  But I am certainly no fs hacker and I have
> never seen any documentation explaining lost+found or what to do with
> it.  Any help would be great and probably enlightening to many people on
> this list.
> 
> Eric Thelin
> aztechbiz.com