On Wed, 2003-02-05 at 11:07, Jon LaBadie wrote:
> What I'm getting at, is if my guess is correct, 41021 is an inode num,
> maybe you can find the offending file/directory and investigate.  Two
> commands to assist: the ls command has a "-i" option that prints the
> inode number of the entries.  Alternatively, if you don't have an idea
> where the offender is, find can locate by inode number:
> 
>    find <path_to_root_of_fs> -xdev -inum 41021
> 
> The "-xdev" keeps the search to the one fs since each fs will have its
> own inode 41021.
> 
> The above syntax is for system V type commands.  I presume linux with
> its gnu counterparts has the same/similar syntax.

John,
Yep, that same syntax works here, and it turns out that inode 41021 is
the directory entry /etc/mysql.  Now this is why it's puzzling to me. 
This directory is where the Debian mysql-common package puts the sample
my.cnf file.  Nothing is actively being changed anywhere in this
directory when a dump occurs, which was a possibility brought up by
Martin Schwarz in a subsequent reply.

Would temporarily renaming the directory cause its inode to change?  How
about copying it to a different file, deleting the original, then
renaming the copy to the original name?  I'm trying to think of
something I could do that would not require a reboot/fsck, but would get
the directory off of that inode.

Thanks,
Eric