Too many inodes

[Albert Hybl Dept of Biophysics SM]

I have been using (umount; fsck -y -s; mount) as a hacked fix for
the Alzheimer's Syndrome that was occurring on /usr4, the file system
containing our news directories.  These commands are being executed
from a demon script that is run daily by the cron.  Since we began
using it, no inodes have been reported lost. 

>From time to time I have run (du -a /usr4 | wc -l) to count
the number of files/directories being used.  This number should
be equal to the number of inodes in use.  When added to the number
of available inodes reported by the command (df /usr4), the sum
should equal the total inodes for the file system.  This was the
case before the demon script was activated.

Since the activation of the demon script, the du|wc generated
value has been too large and is getting larger each time it is
computed.  For example, today fsck reports that 5976 files are
being used; df says that 216 inodes are available and hence
there are a total of 6192 inodes assigned to the file system.
That is as it should be.  However, the du|wc count reports 6368
files/directories!

Can anyone explain why du|wc is not counting correctly.  Is this
another sysV_bug?  Is it safe-harmless or does it portend trouble?

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Albert Hybl, PhD.              Office UUCP: uunet!mimsy!mbph!hybl
Department of Biophysics       Home   UUCP: uunet!mimsy!mbph!hybl!ah
University of Maryland                CoSy: ahybl
School of Medicine
Baltimore, MD  21201                 Phone: (301) 328-7940 (Office)
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