Unknown Files

Files with no inode, no owner and no group.

 Some of files in one of partition formatted with ext3 was showing ? in place of inode, owner and group position. Any Ideas why ? After doing a lot of research it can be said that it was as stated below

root# cd /tmp/vikas
root# ls -li
? ? ? ? ? abc.txt

I become confused. find command also report a number of files which has no owner
root# find /tmp/vikas -nouser

Investing through problem result in conclusion that there is file system error in that partition. I advised apply fsck  command immediately. Applying fsck solved the problem but i am searching in what condition file exist without inode number.

root# fsck -y /dev/vg1/lv1

I also ensured that that file system get applied fsck on  reboot

root# shutdown -Fr now
                                       One interesting point i learned in between is that maximum 16 consequent times a file system can get mounted without applying fsck after that a warning come to fsck although this setting can be override with tune2fs command.

  The best option to reduce file system error is to apply fsck at booting time. This can be easily done by making entry in /etc/fstab for example in my case the entry is

/dev/vg1/lv1  /data  ext3  defaults   1   2

Here 1 says apply fsck and 2 says after applying fsck on root.