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Re: transfering to new HDD



On Thu, Mar 02, 2000 at 10:19:40AM -0500, Allan M. Wind wrote:
> On 2000-03-01 23:42:37, kmself@ix.netcom.com wrote:
> > On Wed, Mar 01, 2000 at 07:05:04PM -0500, Allan M. Wind wrote:
> > > On 2000-03-01 23:42:21, Mary Honeycutt wrote:
> 
> >     tar cf - source  | ( cd /target; tar xpf - )
> 
> Yes, that would be more like it.

Thought so.  I'd hate for someone to find out the hard way....

> > There's a utility to recreate the lost+found directory if you do manage
> > to overwrite it -- it needs to sit on a specific inode for the filesystem
> > to be able to recover lost clusters properly.  RTFM, it's there somewhere.
> 
> Isn't lost+found created by mkfs?

Yes, it is (or mke2fs, or whatever).  My understanding of this is
somewhat limited, but here goes.

Files and directories are identified under most Linux-like fileystems
(e2fs, minix fs, UFS, etc., but *not* msdos, vfat), by inodes.  An inode
is essentially a database entry in a table giving storage location,
name, and values of several attributes (read/write/execute/suid), etc.

When your disk gets f*cked, you fsck it.  This does magic to inodes.  (I
*said* my understanding was limited).  When it can't figure out what
magic to do, like the name of the file was lost, it dumps the "lost"
inodes to a special directory.  Because the *name* of that directory
might itself be lost, it *always* sits on the same inode of the
filesystem -- though this location varies with the specific filesystem
in question IIRC.

So you can't just "mkdir lost+found" and hope everything works.

man (8) mklost+found for more info.


BTW:  Allen, you might want to fix your "Reply-to:" header.

-- 
Karsten M. Self (kmself@ix.netcom.com)
    What part of "Gestalt" don't you understand?

Scope out Scoop:  http://scoop.kuro5hin.org/
Nothin' rusty about Kuro5hin:  http://www.kuro5hin.org/


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