Critical OSX 10.1 file system weirdness

[Zedric]

Today I noticed something strange (or rather my boss did, it's his mail). In $mailroot/Users/myboss/Mail/Companies/ there are folders from A to Z with mail from companies starting with each letter. We noticed that in the E folder, there is suddenly nothing! And I mean nothing, not even . and ..!

[server:myboss/Mail/Companies] root# ls -al
total 0
drwx------    3 myboss  unknown   102 Nov 13 15:52 &ANY-
drwx------   30 myboss  unknown  1020 Nov 27  2002 .
drwxr-xr-x   10 myboss  staff     340 Dec 19 11:37 ..
drwx------    9 myboss  unknown   306 Dec 24  2004 0-9
drwx------   46 myboss  unknown  1564 Sep 28 14:16 A
drwx------   45 myboss  unknown  1530 Sep 28 12:34 B
drwx------   60 myboss  unknown  2040 Sep 28 14:16 C
drwx------   25 myboss  unknown   850 Nov  1 17:12 D
drwx------   60 myboss  unknown  2040 Sep 12 19:05 E
drwx------   30 myboss  unknown  1020 Dec 24  2004 F
drwx------   19 myboss  unknown   646 Mar  7  2005 G
drwx------   20 myboss  unknown   680 Dec 24  2004 H

[...]

drwx------   16 myboss  unknown   544 Jun 18  2004 W
drwx------    5 myboss  unknown   170 Nov 17 16:43 X
drwx------    4 myboss  unknown   136 Apr 26  2003 Y
drwx------    7 myboss  unknown   238 Apr 26  2003 Z
[server:myboss/Mail/Companies] root# cd E/
[server:Mail/Companies/E] root# ls -al
[server:Mail/Companies/E] root#

See? It's not there? Yet the first ls reports 60 items in folder E. Since this means mail from 58 companies, we really need to get it back. Anyone know what's going on here?

 

[X-Istence]

run file and permission thingie magicy from the dvd, to fix permissions. Not having .. and . shows that the file system is corrupted, badly as well. Ive never had it happen, only heard about it.

 

[Zedric]

Aight, file and permission thingie magicy, got it. I'll see what I can do with that then...

 

[SPeedY_B]

You can just run Disk Utility from the /Applications/Utilities/ folder... shouldn't need to use the install CD/DVD.

 

[X-Istence]

You can just run Disk Utility from the /Applications/Utilities/ folder... shouldn't need to use the install CD/DVD.

I thought in older versions it could only find problems, but not repair them if the HD is booted off of.