Re: Scrambled Files

[Ross Vandegrift <ross@willow.seitz.com>]

> > (probably in cache somewhere) 2) being written.
> >
> > For example, apt-get was messing around with xfs when it died.  xfs was
> > completely hosed, as were a bunch of things related to X.  However, the
> > files were hosed with completely non-deterministic contents - german
> > text, what appeared to be UUEncoded binaries, random data, as well as
> > some kind of regular-looking data.  It wasn't like a bunch of the writes
> > got crossed and files ended up backwards.  It also wasn't like random
> > junk was written.
> 
> What you see might be a result of metadata corruption rather than file 
> contents corruption. The metadata might be pointing to astray places, which 
> are either used or unused-but-previously-written-to places on the drive. It 
> may even be that the data from original files is sitting there intact.
> 
> As a side note: did you try fsck'ing the filesystem?
> 
> Cheers,
> Kuba

No, I figured this would probably fix the problems - unfortunately, the
machine's availability is pretty important.  So instead of gambling on
fsck (which the reiserfs devottee in me wanted to do), I started going
about restoring the system from backups and original media (as the
employee in me knew had to be done ::-)

Ross