boot problem, disk mess.. thinking of suicide.

[Oliver Fromme]

Vladimir Mitiouchev wrote:
 > Lessons?
 > 1. Do *NOT* use broken IDE cables.

And if you did, you should newfs(8) the file system when
you replaced the cables with good ones.

According to your initial description, it appears that some
write accesses did not hit the disk successfully, which can
lead to random corruption.  After such an incident, the
best thing you can do is newfs(8) the file systems on the
disk (_after_ you made sure that cables and disks are OK).
Then re-install from your backup.  DragonFly's journaling
feature allows for nice "live" backup streams that can be
stored on another media.  ;-)

Or if you have a mirror (RAID1) setup, and the problem did
not affect all mirror disks, then you can simply rebuild
the failed component, of course.

 > 2. BSD is amazing ;-) It couldn't be possible to get things working
 > without reinstall of whole system in Linux.
 > 3. Backups of disklabel and fdisk is GOOD idea.

Backups of _anything_ is a good idea.  ;-)

 > PS2> Thanks God i wasn't running softupdates!

I don't think it would have made much of a difference.
If the hardware fails (controller, cable, disk), you'll
have damage, no matter whether you run with softupdates
or not.  There isn't really much you can do in software
to prevent that.  Except, of course, running a mirror
with components on different cables (and also different
controllers, if possible).  Or even on different PCs.

Best regards
   Oliver

-- 
Oliver Fromme,  secnetix GmbH & Co. KG, Marktplatz 29, 85567 Grafing
Dienstleistungen mit Schwerpunkt FreeBSD: http://www.secnetix.de/bsd

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