On 2010/11/16 14:01 (GMT+0200) Stan Goodman composed:
There seems to be a residual problem in my system, though apparently unrelated to the swapping of the HDs that was the subject of the earlier problem.
After the corruption in BIOS and /boot was resolved, the last step was to run fsck again on the /home partition, after which the system booted and performed properly. That last step had to be repeated for the next few boot, after which the system sometimes booted normally, and sometimes needed the fsck step.
In the latter case, after the herald screen (the chameleon alone), the repair screen appears, reporting an inconsistency, automatic fsck fails, and it asks for fsck to be run manually.
After fsck finishes, its report includes (these are numbers from a few days ago): "/dev/sda7/:21727/2564096 files (0.7% non-contiguous 1982750/10241429 blocks".
I interpret this as meaning that there are bad blocks on the HD.
For a few days, when fsck was needed, in both number pairs the first number is smaller with every boot. This suggested that the filesystem (ext4) was repairing itself gradually by marking the bad blocks. That changed day before yesterday, and the first numbers of the two pairs is now successively larger, so assuming that my interpretation is correct, the HD is going to hell. In fact, one application (a Java program) has become corrupted, and I assume this is a manifestation of the same deterioration. Everything else that I have been using seems so far to be functioning correctly.
I think I need to replace the HD and reinstall v11.3 anew. I have backups of most data, with the excption of some of the Kmail message files. These are organized in folders that I can copy from the .kde4 tree.
Apparently, the present sda HD is now defective in the /home partition. I don't know if I can just make another partition on the same HD, because I have no idea how far the bad region will spread. If it wouild be wiser to abandon this HD altogether, I can remove it and do the reinstallation on the (curently disconnected) HD which was sdb. Or I could just purchase a new HD, which might be simpler.
Before doing much of anything else, run Seagate's diagnostic software on the device to see the bad sector status. Is the Seagate out of warranty already? For several years its HDs had 5 year warranties. Since then, I think they all carry 3 unless purchased as a refurb or as part of an OEM system. One thing to try if it passes the above test, since you have so much freespace available is to create another partition, mkfs it as something other than ext4, copy the entirety of /home to it, umount home, make the new your /home in fstab, and see what happens on successive boots. If nothing bad seems to happen, you might re-mkfs the original, recopy /home content back, change fstab back, and see if it's OK as other than ext4.
If I move to what was sdb, I do NOT want to confuse the BIOS again, and I would need to have advice about that.
With only one SATA HD (and no connected USB storage) in the system the BIOS will not be causing any "confusion", but the way I remember SATA port behavior you can expect Grub to need reinstalling as a (hd0,6) device instead of the (hd1,6) that it was. Why not disconnect the Seagate, connect the Hitachi, and see if Grub will boot 11.1 to find that out? -- "The wise are known for their understanding, and pleasant words are persuasive." Proverbs 16:21 (New Living Translation) Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 Felix Miata *** http://fm.no-ip.com/ -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org