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Date:      Thu, 18 Sep 1997 01:07:39 -0400
From:      Joshua Fielden <shaggy@lazy.org>
To:        Greg Lehey <grog@lemis.com>
Cc:        Doug Lo <jwlo@ms11.hinet.net>, freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: Warning message, what does it mean?
Message-ID:  <3420B71B.415273F1@lazy.org>
References:  <3421E6FC.3C97F979@ms11.hinet.net> <19970919134926.56921@lemis.com>

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Greg Lehey wrote:
> 
> On Fri, Sep 19, 1997 at 10:44:12AM +0800, Doug Lo wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > When I boot FreeBSD, I got a warning message as below:
> >
> > mountmsdosfs(): Warning: root directory is not a multiple of the
> > clustersize in length.
> >
> > Would anyone tell me what it means?
> 
> Well, the immediate meaning is obvious.
> 
> > Should I notice it?
> 
> Bearing in mind the flaky condition of msdosfs, I'd be very careful.
> I don't know if things have improved, since I don't use Microsoft, but
> there were times when anomalies in the file system structure could
> cause msdosfs to overwrite not only its own partition, but also
> neighbouring ones.  If you must mount the file system, do it
> read-only, at least until somebody more knowledgeable than I tells you
> that the coast is clear.
> 
> Greg

I got this after I used "FIPS" to shrink a DOS partition to install BSD.
It's got to ddo with the trick of fooling the drive into shrinking the
partition but not recalculating clusters. <so you don't need to
reformat> If you used Partition Magic, FIPS, etc to shrink a DOS
partition, I wouldn't worry too much.
-- 
This is a test of the Emergency Broadcast System.  If this had been an
actual life-threatening emergency, we would have fled in terror, and you
would not have been informed.
	 -- Joshua Fielden, Systems Administrator, GeoCities
	http://www.geocities.com	jfielden@geocities.com



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