My /var/spool/ and /var/lib/ directories have changed to unknown file types suddenly. I don't know what caused this. Any one please help me. This is the second time this is happening. Earlier this happened to /tmp directory. Then I removed the tmp and created another tmp directory and rebooted. This solved the problem. But nw I dont know what t do with this. Any one please help me....


?--------- 12 root root 4096 Nov 3 19:33 lib
?--------- 12 root root 4096 Nov 3 19:33 spool

Boot up with a rescue disk and run fsck to check if the filesystem is OK. Also check the drive cables.

Also check the drive.

What happens if you just do a touch on the directory? Are the files within each displaying the same behavior?

Actually these directories changed to some unknown types and i cant change to these directories. How can I recover their contents.

You've been performing backups right?

I've had this happen with external drives. Powering them down and up again and remounting fixed the problem. For some reason they were being detected as "TI boot devices" whatever that is. I think internally, the external drives controller has a problem accessing one of the component drives.

Look in your logs and see if there are IO errors access the drive. If so, then you probably have a bad cable or a drive that is going bad. If the drive is going bad (as in bad blocks, not in the electronics) running the commercial program "spinrite" may be able to fix enough of the drive so that you can pull the data off of the drive before you replace it.