[ale] Re:

[Wandered Inn]

Marc Vogt wrote:
> 
> I thought I had a little problem, but it seems that it is worse than I thought.
> A couple of weeks ago, the power went out on my home computer (the power goes out here
> all the time, anytime it rains).  Usually when that happens, at boot up, it gives
> the standard, hda unclenaly unmounted, check forced, deleted inode fixed etc...

If this happens that often, you should invest in UPS.  You can get them
for around $50 these days.  When you say 'usually when that happens..'
sounds like it happens a lot.  If you corrupt your root file system
enough times, you will screw it enough to where fsck is not going to do
you any favors.

<snip>

> so I did: mkdir /usr/local/wp.  But when I tried to move anything there,
> I got an I/O error. 

I'm guessing from here on out, so anyone, feel free to correct me if I'm
wrong or you disagree.

You have either hosed your inode table or you have a hardware problem. 
I've not seen I/O errors unless it was a hardware problem.  This is not
to say that it is a hardware problem.  This is my based on my personal
experience, which is limited compared to others on this list.

Another thing the UPS will do for you is protect your system from the
inevitable power spikes you will receive during the storms.  Do you
currently have a surge protector on this system?

I would first attempt running fsck again on the suspected filesystem,
probably root unless you've got /tmp mounted separately.  If this does
not find any problems, I would then want to reformat that drive.  Now,
this means you either reinstall, or you copy that file system to other
available space and reformat.  Again since this is apparently your root
file system, this is not an easy thing to do.  You would have to copy /
to somewhere else and then boot from this new place, reformat the old
space and see what it finds, if anything.  How you do this, will depend
on whether you're using LILO or how you boot your system currently. 
Again, these are my guesses/suggestions.  Others feel free to correct me
if I'm wrong.  Now, if you don't have somewhere else to copy your root
file system to, then I would be looking at a backup and reinstall
solution.

--
Until later: Geoffrey		esoteric at denali.atlnet.com

You mean you paid MONEY for Service Pack '98????