Your questions:
>1. What happened ?
It sounds like you had a problem that you haven't described, one that
necessitated your pressing the reset button (this is what you mean by the
"reboot" button, right?). My guess is that the problem somehow messed up
your SCSI controller or your parallel port, so that the kernel (which itself
was fine) couldn't find it. The problem was corrected when the power outage
did what you should have tried anyway, a power-down reset.
In a situation like this one, you should redirect the dmesg output to a
file, so you can tell people what the actual message was.
>2. Does linux fix itself ?
No, if by "linux" you mean the kernel. The various fsck's can fix some
filesystem problems without human intervention, though. And some changes
(e.g., setserial changes to /dev/ttyS* devices) don't stick, so a reboot
restores their base settings.
>3. what would cause the kernel to be corrupted ?
Anything that can damage a file.
At 12:22 AM 7/2/99 -0400, Akintayo Holder wrote:
>I recently was forced to reboot linux using the reboot button (that
>sounds wrong). After the reboot my zip drive would not work, when the
>kernel was loading SCSI support their was a Null exception of some kind
>(i think null pointer) followed by a OOPs (and a number) the ppa module
>was listed as being uninitialised. A dmesg showed an error message a
>screen long.
>
>This continued for two boots, then I had a blackout (power outage) and
>the pc went down before i got to it. When I rebooted the error was gone
>and the zip worked (this is why the above description is vague)
------------------------------------"Never tell me the odds!"---
Ray Olszewski -- Han Solo
Palo Alto, CA 94303-3603 [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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