*#* ISC Bootstrip Wanted. A Dangerous Bag *#*

Antoni Bronislaw Przygienda aprzygie at iiic.ethz.ch
Tue Nov 13 17:46:59 AEST 1990


Hello in the outer space,

First a 'please send me', second 'description of a very nasty
thing on ISC could happen to you (interessting)

	1. Could someone send me the dump of his bootstrap of
 	   the main unix partition ???!!!
	   You can find it as follows:
		a) look at partition table, your main Interactive
		   partitions starts at cylinder _X_
		b) take something you can look at absolute sectors
		   of your hd & go to this cylinder, track 0,
		   sector 0
		c) dump the following 32 block as hex or octal
		   (in ascii, so you can mail it) & send it to me,
		   please, please, please !!!!


	2. Description (why does a crazy swiss want a bootstrap, I
	   can't imagine, & I say, one day, it could happen to 
	   you, you or even YOU [yes, you, sitting in front of
	   your terminal now & drinking coffee]).

	    Story:
		a) like one year ago: formatted 90% of
		   my HD as ISC & 10% as DOS (usual, isn't?)
		   (the dos one /dev/dsk/0p1 went from
		    cylinder 2 to 150)
		b) like 1/2 ago, formatted the DOS partition 
		   (0p1) as Unix, 'cause it works so fine &
		c) making a file system on 0p1, it want's
		   to know, how many blocks does it have ??
		d) Where to find it ? No idea, OK, took my
		   HP & cylinders*tracks*sectors = _Y_
		   (*****something went wrong & I got like
			 30 blocks too much (probably 1 track
			 or so ??!!)*****)
		   Gave her (I tend to speak 'bout ISC as
		   a her, it's almost like the sea, it 
		   always takes & never gives) this magic
 		   number, created the file system & went
		   straight to bed.
		e) next 1/2 I was mostly happy working with
		   it, except it sometimes had a corrupted
		   free list, even after normal shutdown &
		   during boot time the 0p1 was not corrected,
		   so I had to mount it by my own.
		f) something like before yesterday, the 0p1
		   went full, ok I thought, no problem,
		   cleaned something like tmp* and *.bak
		   and made a normal shutdown at night time
		g) **** BANG **** Yesterday booting it ---
			Invalid boot descriptor
		   ???????????????????????????????????
		h) ok, one day later I know, the first 30
		   block were MY BOOTSTRAP of the active
		   unix partition lying above the 0p1 
		   one, got overwritten by the 0p1
		   going full !!!!!!!!!!
		i) don't tell me, I should try mkpart or
		   take my sector backup, I only have the
		   file system backups & the mkpart brings
		   some thousands of excuses, why I can't 
		   generate a new bootstrap 
		   for example:
			-invalid dpinfo (even with an -i)
			-no alternate partition    ???? ;-)
			-no root partition 	   ????	;-)
		   My vendor told me:
			'Oh, just format it & backup again'
		   I don't want to do it !!! Have a lot of
		   better things to do than 2 days of backuping
		   & of cause, my backup something like 2 weeks
		   old & I did a lot of system work during
		   this time.
		h) taking the bootstrap from the disk doesn't 
		   work, it boots, but then it wants to take
		   take the system from the disk


	Please mail your bootstrip to me, I'm begging you


					Tony

PS: By the way, what do YOU think 'bout the ISC Update policy


Hello in the outer space,

First a 'please send me', second 'description of a very nasty
thing on ISC could happen to you (interessting)

	1. Could someone send me the dump of his bootstrap of
 	   the main unix partition ???!!!
	   You can find it as follows:
		a) look at partition table, your main Interactive
		   partitions starts at cylinder _X_
		b) take something you can look at absolute sectors
		   of your hd & go to this cylinder, track 0,
		   sector 0
		c) dump the following 32 block as hex or octal
		   (in ascii, so you can mail it) & send it to me,
		   please, please, please !!!!


	2. Description (why does a crazy swiss want a bootstrap, I
	   can't imagine, & I say, one day, it could happen to 
	   you, you or even YOU [yes, you, sitting in front of
	   your terminal now & drinking coffee]).

	    Story:
		a) like one year ago: formatted 90% of
		   my HD as ISC & 10% as DOS (usual, isn't?)
		   (the dos one /dev/dsk/0p1 went from
		    cylinder 2 to 150)
		b) like 1/2 ago, formatted the DOS partition 
		   (0p1) as Unix, 'cause it works so fine &
		c) making a file system on 0p1, it want's
		   to know, how many blocks does it have ??
		d) Where to find it ? No idea, OK, took my
		   HP & cylinders*tracks*sectors = _Y_
		   (*****something went wrong & I got like
			 30 blocks too much (probably 1 track
			 or so ??!!)*****)
		   Gave her (I tend to speak 'bout ISC as
		   a her, it's almost like the sea, it 
		   always takes & never gives) this magic
 		   number, created the file system & went
		   straight to bed.
		e) next 1/2 I was mostly happy working with
		   it, except it sometimes had a corrupted
		   free list, even after normal shutdown &
		   during boot time the 0p1 was not corrected,
		   so I had to mount it by my own.
		f) something like before yesterday, the 0p1
		   went full, ok I thought, no problem,
		   cleaned something like tmp* and *.bak
		   and made a normal shutdown at night time
		g) **** BANG **** Yesterday booting it ---
			Invalid boot descriptor
		   ???????????????????????????????????
		h) ok, one day later I know, the first 30
		   block were MY BOOTSTRAP of the active
		   unix partition lying above the 0p1 
		   one, got overwritten by the 0p1
		   going full !!!!!!!!!!
		i) don't tell me, I should try mkpart or
		   take my sector backup, I only have the
		   file system backups & the mkpart brings
		   some thousands of excuses, why I can't 
		   generate a new bootstrap 
		   for example:
			-invalid dpinfo (even with an -i)
			-no alternate partition    ???? ;-)
			-no root partition 	   ????	;-)
		   My vendor told me:
			'Oh, just format it & backup again'
		   I don't want to do it !!! Have a lot of
		   better things to do than 2 days of backuping
		   & of cause, my backup something like 2 weeks
		   old & I did a lot of system work during
		   this time.
		h) taking the bootstrap from the disk doesn't 
		   work, it boots, but then it wants to take
		   take the system from the disk


	Please mail your bootstrip to me, I'm begging you


					Tony

PS: By the way, what do YOU think 'bout the ISC Update policy



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