on Fri, Nov 30, 2001 at 11:32PM, xprite@bigfoot.com wrote:
(silly question) Have you tried mkdir /mnt/lost+found? I don't know the effect of doing this, it could cause your computer to spontaneously combust, back up your data first, etc, etc.
If that fails, it might be a case of rolling up sleaves and having a go
with
debugfs.
Hi Xsprite,
First of all a public "Thank You" for your prompt help and advice regarding my query. It can be very unnerving to a newbie to encounter a serious/fatal sounding filesystem problem he doesn't understand. There is a great temptation to simply curse, reformat the hard disk, and reinstall things from the CD/backups but I didn't want to do that as it would mean I missed out on an opportunity to experiment and learn from what has happened. There is no doubt I could have quickly reinstalled my system and promised faithfully to myself to read up about it later (which I probably would never have got round to), however I understand things better by "getting my hands dirty" and experimenting (I guess this is what is attracting me to Linux) so with trembling fingers I did indeed try simply typing "mkdir /mnt/lost+found" as you suggested and have sent you (off-list as it is quite long) the output I subsequently got from e2fsck after unmounting /dev/sda5. I am very much a Linux newbie and probably wont understand what you say but is there any chance of explaining the problems e2fsck found with my filesystem, and what it did to correct them, so I (and perhaps other list subscribers) can learn a little more about the Linux filesystem from this problem? Alternatively, is there a good book/help file/web page somewhere which you could recommend to anyone who wants to learn a little more about Linux filesystems (and perhaps more about the debugfs program you mentioned) to use as a reference for future filesystem crashes?
Ian.