[vox-tech] In Denial About These Hard Drive Problems

[vox-tech@lists.lugod.org]

On Wed, Jun 19, 2002 at 10:21:15PM -0700, Richard S. Crawford wrote:
> This afternoon I noticed that my /home partition was expanding 
> again.  Normally when I run df -h it shows /home as being filled to 52% of 
> the available space; this afternoon, though, it was up to 100%.

Richard,

  I have skimmed briefly through this thread, if you don't have everything
important backed up off that drive I would recommend doing that first.
If you can't get some of your important files off the drive I recommend
just turning the machine off.

  This problem could be something very simple or could be very severe, 
there really isn't enough detail here to see what is happening.  I would 
recommend doing a LERT type thing where you have someone out there
actually look at your machine.

  Regarding ME's comment about hard links to directories... as far as
I knew they are not permitted in Linux, even to root.  Although the ln man
page talks about them being possible they are not permitted on ext3.  They
are just a risky idea anyway... (ln -d /tmp /tmp/foo; find /tmp ;)

  The DMA problems Pete posted in another thread _could_ be something as
simple as bad cabling, but they should _not_ be happening... and depending
on the real reason and which kernel version you have they could be
silently corrupting your filesystem.  Attempts to fsck really damaged
filesystems can wipe them out...

  It would be best if you have another disk drive bigger than your original
for recovery purposes.

  If you are interested in the house call approach I should be available
this evening sometime around 8.  Possibly earlier... I wouldn't object to
other people being around.

    Later,
      Mike