Hi,
I have some doubt regarding the "/spare" and "/spare/lost+found"
directory in unix. Currently i am using SVR4 and i couldn't able to
figure out what these directories stands for???

This Problem arrived because i want to remove the "world writable
permission" from this directory so that an ordinary user couldn't able
to write into it.

Can anybody please tell me which kind of utilities are wrighting into
this directory???

Thanks

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On Tue, 04 Sep 2007 00:38:34 -0700 Debu <debasish4@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>       I have some doubt regarding the "/spare" and "/spare/lost+found"
> directory in unix. Currently i am using SVR4 and i couldn't able to
> figure out what these directories stands for???

I haven't heard of /spare but I also have never used a [true] SVR4
system.  lost+found is the standard directory name for inode-based
filesystems where unreferenced files are placed by fsck.  My guess,
based on the name, is that /spare is a local convention for this
system for ... wait for it ... spare disk space ... and is not a
standard unix directory.  Also, the fact that there is a
/spare/lost+found indicates that /spare is probably a filesystem
mount point and not just a directory in the / filesystem, reinforcing
my guess that this is just a local convention.

Are you really using SVR4?  That's pretty ancient.

> This Problem arrived because i want to remove the "world writable
> permission" from this directory so that an ordinary user couldn't able
> to write into it.

lost+found should be mode 0700.  As to /spare I wouldn't know.

It is possible the /spare is NOT a filesystem mount point, and that
lost+found is therefore NOT the standard fsck directory, and therefore
changing lost+found to ore 0700 might break things.  You can find out
by running 'mount'.

-frnak

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