> : > 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 absolutely reliable devices... hence > the expression "backup, backup, backup".
Assuming that my boot problem was caused by an "unlinked boot block" what is the preferred way to check for and fix this? My roundabout technique of precipitating a complete system lockup by viewing certain system log files and then turning the power off seems rather crude; there must be a better way. As I said previously, running "fsck.ext2 /dev/hda1" manually did not detect any problems or fix anything. > Hard disks are the most common form of secondary storage devices, while RAM > is the most common primary storage device. Hum, is that how the Unix world sees it? I never thought of RAM as storage--it goes away when you turn the power off. I guess in a Unix/server environment you don't turn the computers off (or crash a lot) like you do at home with DOS/Windows. Dexter
