Take the 2-minute tour ×  I want to start by stating that I
don't have any issues that I'm trying to resolve other than a
hypothesis. And I could RTFC, but there's a lot of filesystem
code that I'd have to familiarize myself with ;)  I'm curious
what would happen if I were to open a file and then unlink it in
the filesystem (but still have the open handle). Then the system
crashes.  Specifically: I'm curious as to whether the files
inode will still indicate that it has references, but nothing in
the filesystem points to it anymore, or whether it's up to the
OS to know that it can't write to the space, but as far as the
inode is concerned it's free.  Additionally, am I missing
something else in here? Thanks :)  share|improve this question
add comment  1 Answer  up vote 1 down vote accepted  After a
system crash there will be one of two conditions: either the
journal will be recovered or fsck will be run. Did you seen
Clearing orphaned inode XXXXX messages it's printing on boot?
This is exactly your case: an in