FILE CORRUPTION...(??VIRUS??)..partial SUMMARY

From: Randy Born M-50 Rm 266 (randy@ai.iit.nrc.ca)
Date: Wed Dec 08 1993 - 19:37:19 CST


Further to an earlier post. User files are being corrupted as follows:

-file size remains unchanged.

-many ( thousands,) characters are changed to null. These are always
sequential and always from somewhere in file to end of file.

- checksum of a good copy (from tape) and corrupted copy diff (AS THEY SHOULD)

- any type of file can be affected.

- corrupt files appear to be random though out user dir. Sometimes all the
files in a sub-dir are affected and sometimes only one or a few.

I"VE checked various ftp sites for possible sun-patch-list to see if
any known patch for this sympton exists. None found.

Hopefully this expanded post may shed some light amongst my peer system mgrs/admins.
 
ANY HELP/advice/prayers or suggestions will be most appreciated!!

Has anybody experienced similiar happennings and know why or patch# to cure?

SunOS in use is 4.1.1 and user workstations are IPC's
Server of user nfs files is a 4/490 also running 4.1.1

(We are not knowingly doing anything special.)

                                                                Randy Born
                                                        System Admin trying to drain the swamp
                                                        which is rapidly rising...

A few replies but none applicable to our case.
>>>reply 1
Do you have an NC400 board in your 4/490. If so, you probably want
to turn UDP check sums on. The ether device will probably be ne0,
so you can look for it in /var/adm/messages or with the command dmesg.
Also, if you have that board, make sure to get patch 100762-02, as
it fixes a really nasty bug with oversized packets.

Ben Taylor
s9ubxt@fnma.com
>>>> NOT APPLICABLE TO OUR SETUP

>>>reply2
The strangest thing happened: programs only reading files can corrupt that file
On the physical drive nothing is wrong. just NFS went nuts.
Even worse, other workstations accessing the same part from the 3/50, will also
see a corrupted file. The problem goes away eventually if the directory is left alone
for a while, and some other directories are listed with ls(1)
I guess if the NFS server buffering mechanism is flushed somehow , all things turn back
as normal. This only happens with files larger than +100 Kbyte

Marcel Bernards
>>>> ALSO NOT APPLICABLE

*******************************************************************************
* Randy V. Born EMAIL: born@ai.iit.nrc.ca *
* Technical Officer randy@ai.iit.nrc.ca *
* National Research Council of Canada PHONE: (613) 993-8549 *
* Montreal Road , Bldg M-50 FAX: (613) 952-7151 *
* Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, K1A 0R8 *
* *
* * ** ** ***** *** *** * *
* * *** ** ** ** ** * ** * * *
****************** ** * ** **** ** ** ********************
                * ** *** ** ** ** * ** * *
               * ** ** ** ** *** *** *

 



This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : Fri Sep 28 2001 - 23:08:31 CDT