[SGVLUG] It's too hot to compute!

[Tom Emerson]

The thermometer on the wall is reading over 100, and "suddenly" things got 
flakey on my computer -- applications just vanished mid-keystroke, programs 
wouldn't start due to "bus errors", and stuff like that.  I figured something 
was amiss, but as to what I wasn't certain, then I felt the case -- ouch!

I had just recently vacuumed it out [seems the "dust" component has gone up 
exponentially now that I have a couple of dogs] but apparently missed a spot 
in front [an intake?] that was choked with dog hair and dust.  Shut the 
system off for a few minutes to cool down, and when I restarted it, the 
obligatory fsck complained and I was dropped into single-user mode [though 
prompted for root's password...]

Reiser got more and more whiney about problems with /dev/vg00/home, and 
eventually told me to "rebuild the superblock" [which eventually led to 
rebuilding the entire tree]

KDE failed to start properly, so I went to the console and checked:

  $ cd /home
  $ ls
  lost+found
  $

awww crap -- guess I should have been using those blank DVD's to actually 
backup my /home directory...  [going into the lost+found directory I found 
some 50+ numbered directories and roughly the same number of straight files.]

But wait, you say -- you're headers show you're posting from kmail, so you've 
managed to get something back, right?

Well, yes -- using "mc" [the "midnight commander", a straight clone of 
norton's dos-based norton commander] I was able to identify which of the 
directories was essentially my "home" direcotry, "~/,kde", and several other 
important directories (and as an unintended side effect, I've done some 
much-needed spring-cleaning of useless directories...)

(hmmm... apparently not all of them have been found, as kmail is complaining 
about missing setups for some accounts -- hope the outbound config is still 
there...)

well, things should go a /little/ easier now -- at least I'm pretty sure I can 
eval-and-delete that which I don't need in my home dir faster...

-- 
blogref temporarily disabled for the Rabbi's benefit ;)
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 240 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://vorean.sgvlug.org/pipermail/sgvlug/attachments/20050827/2e4e45d5/attachment.bin