# Should I Worry About Orphan inodes?

## ryesky

I notice every 1 to 5 reboots that I get an unreferenced inode deleted in my /var/log/messages

```
Nov 19 12:29:31 yippy kjournald starting.  Commit interval 5 seconds

Nov 19 12:29:31 yippy EXT3-fs: hdb3: orphan cleanup on readonly fs

Nov 19 12:29:31 yippy ext3_orphan_cleanup: deleting unreferenced inode 31260749

Nov 19 12:29:31 yippy EXT3-fs: hdb3: 1 orphan inode deleted

Nov 19 12:29:31 yippy EXT3-fs: recovery complete.

Nov 19 12:29:31 yippy EXT3-fs: mounted filesystem with ordered data mode.

```

Is this something that's common, or should I worry about?

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## didymos

What it probably means is that some file was deleted but not the entry in the inode table.  Usually you'll see that when you've had to do a hard reboot after a lockup and weren't able to unmount the filesystems.  It's most likely fine, but I'm curious as to the regularity of it.  Is there some problem process that isn't shutting down correctly?

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## ryesky

I reboot my computer properly and have had any lockups or power outtages in a long time, so that can't be it.  I'm not sure if there are any problem processes that aren't shutting down, and if there are, I'm not seeing any blatant warnings/messages about it.  Each time an inode is deleted it's around the same number, ie: this time it was 31260749 and the previous time it was inode 31260695 (I think).

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## desultory

Has the drive itself been checked for integrity problems (e2fsck -cf $block_device with $block_device being unmounted)?

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## ryesky

Yes, I've booted into the livecd and I've used badblocks and nothing was detected.   That, as well as a forced fsck.

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