Lost files on long running systems

[Joshua Schmidlkofer <kernel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

First of all - none of the files are of consequence.

I have about 10 small systems running Linux 2.6.x with XFS.   Most of 
them are 2.6.5 or later.  I also have a couple running 2.6.3.   The 
majority of them are running Gentoo, but a couple are running RedHat 9.

After long running periods, [Which on Intel Hardware, with battery 
backups is 90 - 180 days], I will run into a situation with an upgrade 
where I have to reboot.   Usually, since I have downtime, I have been 
running xfs_repair.  What I almost always find will be a couple hundred 
files and directories moved to lost+found.

All old .so files, deleted directories, and all sorts of other stuff 
from upgrades.   It is almost exclusivly upgrades.

I cannot make any commitments about whether or not the boxes have had 
any 'spontaneous' reboots due to power failure, etc.   However, it's 
hard to  believe that all of them have had that happen.

Any suggestions?  Guidance?  Etc.   The filesystems appear healthy.

I couple times I have had postfix queues running very slow.  Shutting 
down and restarting did not help.  Finally I ran an xfs_repair, and it 
worked.   I got the same issue, hundreds of left-overs.   However, the 
system load dropped substantially.


I know these are all very nebulous, but does anyone have any advice?

thanks,
  Joshua