Re: [gentoo-user] recovery from /var corruption?

[Volker Armin Hemmann <volkerarmin@googlemail.com>]

On Freitag 26 Februar 2010, Mark Knecht wrote:

> 
> The machine _mostly_ crashed while running badblocks. I say mostly
> because the mouse is still alive but I can no longer ssh in and cannot
> open a terminal on my wife's desktop or get to the console.

because it is not crashed but waiting for the ide timeouts.

> 
> I tried to Ctrl-C out out of badblocks here (this is running shelled
> in) before I figured out it was a total crash which messed up the
> terminal a bit but you can see what it was reporting before the crash
> 
> dragonfly ~ # badblocks -sv /dev/hda
> Checking blocks 0 to 156290903
> Checking for bad blocks (read-only test): 89360960done, 35:00 elapsed
> 89360961done, 35:09 elapsed
> 89360962
> 89360963
> ^C^C18% done, 35:27 elapsed
> 
> So, there seem to be problems, possibly with the drive, or maybe it's
> some sort of overheating problem on the processor and this was just
> the way the processor failed before the crash?
> 
> I ran memtest86 night before last for 8 hours and had no memory
> problems. I'll remove memory and PCI cards, reseat everything, and
> then see what happens.

protip: if you are running badblocks (or ddrescue) on a probably damaged 
device - attach it with an usb adapter. That way your box is still usable.

/me hates linux kernel for making processes in D unkillable and sucking very 
much on diskio.