Quoting Stephen Paul E Florentino ([EMAIL PROTECTED]):
> Thanks for the tips.
You're most welcome.
> The box that I've been working on is really being a pain in the *ss.
> Now its got booting problems and I speculate again that it is a hard
> drive or mobo problem or both.
Sounds like it.
> I've got the important files on a different drive which I've decided
> to relocate to a saner box.
Good news.
> Anyway, how do you surface scan a hard drive in Linux ala scandisk in
> MS-DOG?
At the time that you make the filesystem (partition), there's always a
command-line option for the filesystem-creation tool, to include a
surface scan and mapping out of bad blocks. For example, the utility
used to make ext2 filesystems is usually called mke2fs, or sometimes
mkfs.ext2 (or possibly some variation on that), and it supports a "-c"
option to force a check for bad blocks.
If you'd like to check an existing filesystem, and do _not_ want to
re-make it, then use the "badblocks" utility. Ideally, umount (unmount)
the filesystem, first: Running badblocks on a mounted filesystem can
make the system crash. Badblocks therefore defaults to read-only
operation on mounted filesystems, unless you use the -f = force flag.
So, ideally, switch to single-user mode ("init 1") or boot from a Linux
maintenance floppy or LNX-BBC disk, so that you can run badblocks on
unmounted filesystems. (Single-user mode isn't enough if it's the root
filesystem you need to check.)
Of course, if you want to give up on the existing filesystem's contents,
running mke2fs with the -c option is less trouble.
--
Cheers, "Learning Java has been a slow and tortuous process for me. Every
Rick Moen few minutes, I start screaming 'No, you fools!' and have to go
[EMAIL PROTECTED] read something from _Structure and Interpretation of
Computer Programs_ to de-stress." -- The Cube, www.forum3000.org
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