[plug] Bad superblock

[Leon Brooks]

Damion Hill wrote:
> 
> I fired up my trusty linux partition last night to receive the nasty
> message that I had a bad superblock. When I tried to boot from the rescue
> disk, lilo wouldn't start so I've had to go thru a rebuild of my system.

Could have tried mounting with an alternate superblock; maybe "-b 8193"
from memory.

> What is it that causes a superblock to go bad?

Evil companions. (-:

> I was getting symptoms of a problem earlier. I booted linux and then
> started xscreensaver while I was away for a bit. About an hour after
> booting, my brother fired up netscape without the ppp link being active.
> Netscape crashed and I had to kill it. Fired up the ppp link without
> hassle but from then on, my backspace and delete keys only caused a beep
> without doing what they were sposed to do. I restarted X thinking it might
> just be a problem there but it didn't resolve the prob.

> Can Netscape do something like this or am I looking at bigger problems?

Netscape can mess around with key mapping, but IMHO would be hard
pressed to kill a superblock. However, Netscape nastiness wouldn't
normally be expected to survive an X restart. Try running a good virus
scanner over your _Windows_ partition!

-- 
There is no mechanical problem so difficult that it cannot be solved
by brute strength and ignorance. -- William's Law