> > Doing a 'halt' and then restarting always find problems with the root
> > fs. Doing 'fasthalt' just stops it from checking, but the same
> > problems are there.
> 
> Hmmm, I've run into exactly the same problem.  It's always one or two 
> unreferenced inodes with a common size and mode.
> 
> Just for fun I did an fsck -n right after logging in and syncing and guess
> what?  Those funny little lost inodes are already lost...

It is not unusual for a live filesystem to contain "lost" inodes; when an open
file is removed (a frequent stunt for temporary files), it remains active until
it is closed.

The last time I routinely had trouble with fsck after rebooting, I turned off
my external cache; apparently, some PC motherboards (mine included) do not respond
to the BINVAL instruction that is used to selectively flush the cache before
setting up DMA.  You might try doing this (disable it from the boot-up diagnostic
software), and see if it helps.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------