toasted root file system

[Michael DeCorte]

The discussion about 2 identical file names in the same directory
reminded me of a problem that I had (am having) with one of the sites
of mine.

I modemed in to the computer (SV.3, moto VME147) to update some
software.  In doing so I got a funny error message.  about the
password file.  I went hmmm.  cat /etc/passwd.  cat reports a stat
error.  (I haven't the faintest idea how I logged in) more hmmm's. ls
/etc- that works.  ls -l /etc 8-10 stat errors on lots of interesting
files.  a few more hmmm's.  df nope that reports all of of nice
errors.  ls -l /usr that works, other files systems seem ok.  root's
toasted.  I considered running fsck at this time but the computer 
must have perceived this and decided that it didn't want to be fsck'ed
so it crashed.  The system hasn't booted since.  My guess is that
a bunch of inodes got munged.

I assume someone flipped power at some time just because well.... its
just like a PC right?  

Now if the system had bothered to stay up for a little longer and I
was a proper wizard I could have run fsdb on it but to do that I would
have to unmount / wouldn't I?  otherwise wouldn't going init 6 sort of
ruin my work?  Same goes for all the other interesting ways that I can
think of to fix this.  (something tells me that running fsck would
have made the disks normal but without enough stuff to boot)

So what do you do if you mangle root?  

(what are we doing for this computer?  2.5 hour drive down, pop in a
new disk that has an os on it, and bring back the old disk) -sigh


--

Michael DeCorte // H215-546-0497 W386-8164 Fax386-8252 // mrd at clutx.bitnet
2300 Naudain St. "H", Phil, PA 19146 // mrd at sun.soe.clarkson.edu
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