Steffen,
> > > Looks like the contents of fs cache. > > > You might try to find out what's there (from single user best, but > > > another root partition would do too) using df. Make sure to first mount > > > read-only, then (when you can see everything is somehow still alive) > > > remount rw. fsck'ing may be a Very Bad Idea. If you can see files it'd > > > be a good idea to do some kind of backup (if it works, you won't need it > > > afterwards in 99% of all cases) before going rw. > > > > Hmm, I'n not familiar with the automounter design at all, > > what do you mean by fs cache. Chances are fsck has already > > been run since the first time I rebooted it was into the > > same partition. I'm not really sure what you are > > suggesting here since I already remounted it from another > > partition and saw the above directories? > > Well, I'm a bit confused. You "rebooted into the same partition" ... and > "remounted it from another partition". Yes > At the same time, or were these different attempts? Separate attempts. When I first noticed something wrong (ls would no longer work), I rebooted into the same partition figuring that if the automounter was somehow covering up the / filesystem, that it would not do that on reboot since I would not have accesed /cdrom yet. I assume that with ext3, this would have fscked the partition. Once I rebooted and realized that (alomst) everything was still gone, I rebooted into my safe partition and mounted the original (potentially trashed) partition on /mnt so that I could peruse it, -> files still missing. This mounting would probably not have run fsck (I did not run it manually.) > YOu should really "boot single" to be able to rename the auto.master > file. What about Knoppix? It's a perfect tool to repair damaged > installations :-) I will boot single tonight and look around even more. When this first happened, I simply decided to cut my losses and stop (you know, late at night). I figured I simply did something that would trash my filesystem, but I wasn't sure and wanted more info before I decided to cut my losses and rebuild. It sounds like I am getting the signal that I should not have actually lost anything, so I will need to go home and take a deeper look. > Hmmm. What did 'df' tell you? Again, mind you this was late Friday, but I think I recall trying df and noticing that the available space was very large and used space very low. Before that my system was pretty tight, at least 80% used. This was another indicator to me that I had goofed royally and that the filesystem was not simply being masked. I'm sorry that I can't double check everyting I am saying until tonight, I will though. You now have me convinced that my system should not have been deleted. Is this something that is valuable for this list to be sure about, should I hold off rebuilding my machine until we know exactly what happened? I am running debian sid if that makes a difference, -Martin _______________________________________________ autofs mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://linux.kernel.org/mailman/listinfo/autofs
