I♥QNX in file system

QNX USERS QNX2 and QNX4
1

Hi,

On our QNX4.25 system, the other day I was unable to use pipe “|” (as in sin|more). When I did, it seemed to try to execute every file in the directory I happend to be in.

Now many of the directories have what looks like a binary file called I♥QNX. Looks like the file system is messed up. What is going on? Any help is appreciated.

Thanks,
Dan

2

Hello Dan,
What was the exact command that caused the problem? Was it just sin|more? Is the problem reproducible?
As to the file system being messed up, try to fix it with chkfsys.
Thanks,
Yuriy

3

Hi,

Thanks for responding.

It seemed to happen when I used pipe “|”. For example “sin|more” or “sin|less”. It was OK when using sin by itself.

4

Hello Dan,
Can you post (attach) one of the files with this strange name?
Thanks,
Yuriy

5

Hello Yuriy,

I ran chkfsys and that fixed all the file problems. Everything looks normal and the I♥QNX files are gone. However, the pipe “|” thing is still a problem.

I can do ls, sin, cat, but when I try to use | it looks like it starts to execute each file in the /bin directory because I see on the display:

… :not found
.best: not found
Audio: card type not specified
Blkfsys failed to attach name: Resource busy

If you ls the /bin directory, the first few entries are
…
.best
Audio
Blkfsys

So it appears that it’s trying to execute each file that it finds.
Strange?

6

Hello Dan,
Try the following:
On console 1:
ls –lR /usr | more

On console 2:
sin –P Pipe

Do you see something like
21 //1/bin/Pipe

Thanks,
Yuriy

7

Hello Yuriy,

I’ve solved the problem. It wasn’t pipe at all. It was “more” and “less” executables in /bin. They were overwritten with directory information. Once I copied more and less from another node everything was fine.

Thanks again for your help,
Dan

8

The I♥QNX is a file system marker that’s helpful if you really mess up a disk and want to try to put it back together. It is in a part of the disk that you should never see unless you are looking directly at /dev/hd0t77 or /dev/hd0.

9

Dan,
I have seen more corrupted before. Someone mistakenly types “ls > more” instead of “ls | more”, and instead of piping to more, the more file gets overwritten.
Just need to be aware.
ms…

10

Reply to MSchneider:

Funny that you mentioned "more geting corrupted. That’s exactly what happened. I was training someone on Monday and that is precisely what he typed by mistake.

“ls > more” which, of course, wrote the listing of /bin into the file “more”. Then to add to the confusion, he also typed “ls > less” so that one was corrupted as well.

Thanks to everyone for responding.

Regards,
Dan

11

Sounds like a good reason not to train newbies by using the root account ;-)

Tim

12

Look in root directory. There’s file “pipe”.
If there isn’t pipe don’t work.
This file makes with /bin/Pipe utilite.
Put in sysinite next string to run it:
Pipe &