See Below .... Sometime just before Tuesday 02 July 2002 05:56 pm Dexter Graphic Wrote about:[EUG-LUG:3242] Re: Dexter's boot troubles : Thanks for your analysis, Jamie. Below are some clarifications and more : questions. : : > My guess is your original boot block had an issue (not being properly : > linked?) and the fsck ran by the boot process probably re-linked to an : > alternate boot block : : What causes a boot block to become unlinked? And wouldn't one of the : many filesystem checks I ran manually have found that right away? Sigh... hard drive crashes, unproperly shutting down possibly... I dont know all the reasons.. but hard disks are not absolutly reliable devices... hence the expression "backup, backup, backup". : : > (Ive seen this before, but had to manually hit y to do so... it may : > have not prompted you?). The message Ive seen does specify that its : > boot block, not part of the rest of the filesystem, it even mentions : > the specific locations. : : I do not recall seeing any mention of boot blocks. The messages I saw : after the "unclean shutdown" referred to unlinked file fragments that : it offered to put in a folder for me. At first I told it to just : discard the lost fragments but then it gave another and yet another : warning so I said OK, go ahead and save them if you like. Its entirely likely that mandrake set the default to answer yes when it did its fsck, from here, I cant quite tell... : : > However... this is just a guess... I couldnt say definitively : > anything other than it sounds like something to do with your : > secondary storage device. : : What do you mean by a "secondary storage device"? I only have one : hard disk in the computer. Hard disks are the most common form of secondary storage devices, while RAM is the most common primary storage device.
: : > : Is there some way to do a surface scan of the hard : > : disk under GNU/Linux? Most hard drive manufacturers have utilities to do this, but they can be dangerous.... I use them on disks with no data.. too re-condition/check-condition of drives... but I would only use them on unused disks... never on a non-backed up usable system ;( : : Does anyone know the answer to this question? Yes. : : Dex Jamie
