Once you have run fossil with venti and it has done its first snap -a, which is usually done after the first fossil+venti boot, you can now never run fossil without venti. Fossil now contains only the files which have changed since the last snap -a. All other files which have not changed WRT the snap are reprisented by pointers (scores) into the venti archive; This is fundamental to how fossil and venti work.
What you can do is run venti without fossil and extract your data from there (using vacfs) provided you can get a score which reprisents the root of the filesystem you are after (use fossil/last on your fossil partition). You can also completely repopulate your fossil as of the time of that last snap -a losing only the changes between the snap -a and the time your system crashed. I wrote a "hold your hand" document, primarily for my own use, which describes rebuilding a working system from only the venti arenas. http://plan9.bell-labs.com/sources/contrib/steve/doc/Venti-rescue.pdf I strongly suggest you print out the fossil and venti papers and manual pages and read them carefully. -Steve
