My computer froze up again while I was online and I could not move the mouse. When this happens I assume that malware is being downloaded into my computer so I unplug my computer to stop whatever it is that is going on.

Eventually I was able to use a parted magic disc and go to the terminal and run e2fsck -fp /dev/sda2 and a number of orphaned inod's came up and were cleared. Does anyone know what they are?? Thanks!!

Why would a download cause your computer to freeze?
Most unlikely that malware could cause this.

Your sudden removal of the mains power is almost guaranteed to cause data loss and corruption of filesystems.

What programs were running at the time?
On a small machine web browsers can use 100% CPU when displaying badly written web pages.

I notice that you say "My computer froze up again..."
Hardware errors such as memory faults can be a cause of lock ups.

Inodes are part of what makes a file system a system: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inode

An orphaned inode is one that has its way; it exists but cannot be accessed by the system: http://unix.stackexchange.com/questi...orphaned-inode

As regards this freeze being caused by malware, I agree with JeremyBoden. Malware is designed not to give itself away so overtly.

Here's a guide to various ways to deal with computer freezes under Linux: https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Linux_Guide/Freezes

Thanks Gentlemen!!

Many years ago my website's " guestbook " was constantly filed every day with ads from a few " spammers " that felt that there ads must be displayed there. The only way that I could finally stop it was to remove the " guestbook URL " and ever since then the spammers have been freezing up my computer!!

Have you looked at your websites logs at the appropriate times?

They live in Virginia and Maryland; but I am an old " non-violent " person that is just hoping that someday someone " fixes " their wagons!!

Do you have a firewall?

Are you hosting your own website on your personal computer? Or is it being hosted elsewhere and you have to log in to make changes?

The guestbook spam you are referring to is almost always generated by bots, not people. These are programs designed to comb through the internet and post spam wherever there is an insecure guestbook or message board. It's not some random person with a vendetta against you targeting your specific webpage. It's doubtful the person controlling the bot has ever even been to your webpage.

The chances that removing access to the guestbook angered some hacker to the point that he started attacking your personal computer, injecting malware to cause it to lock up, is basically zero.

I did away with my website guestbook a long time ago--eight, nine years ago?--for spam entries like those mentioned by cousinlucky, but no one pursued me vengefully when I did.

I was self-hosting at the time on Slackware (12, I think) with the Project Files rc.firewall.

To strictly-answer the question:

In Linux parlance, an "inode" (effectively ...) is "what 'a disk file' actually is."

Directory entries, meanwhile, refer to it. Normally, there is one such entry, but if you define "hard links" to the file (versus "symbolic" links), there may be more than one. In Unix filesystems, "directory entries" are separate from the "actual files" (inodes) that they refer to.

Disk-repair utilities customarily place entries in a /lost+found directory to correspond to any inodes that they find which have absolutely no directory-entries pointing to them. This enables you to, perhaps, identify what the "orphaned" file actually is, and to rename it back to the right place in the directory hierarchy.

as far as being on the internet with a browser and its freeze up to the point you cannot even use your mouse, it is usually 99.9% of the time a (java) script going crazy looping locking up your system.

Yeah, that may create orphaned inodes.
Try noscript and what causes you to assume (incorrectly, IMO) that's it is malware?
If it were malware, it's the worst POS I've "seen" as it was found out rather quickly by an inexperienced user, (No Offense).

Try a new profile on the same site. Try a cleaned history/cookie/cache on the same sight. Try another browser on the same site.

Why assume it's malware?

PARANOIA

doing a hard shut down , not letting it shut down properly will cause errors to your system, if you actually believe or think someone is in your box looking around all you have to do is disconnect, not shut down.

I'm going to stop using that os on the internet; and use the other one I have installed on my machine. Hostgator hosts my website and they have their " error page " up where my guestbook used to be!! Habitual, I take no offense at being an old " computer illiterate "; the only thing I was logical enough to do was to give up trying to safely use windows on the internet and switch to linux!!