Hi All
Over the weekend I lost my 3rd HD using MC under Mandrake 10.1 in 2 different
computers.
In each case MC was being used to search or move a directory that had over 100
data files with over 2 GB of data.
In the last instance Saturday morning I was transferring a directory with over
5 GB of data from /home/branch/My_Pictures {Data directory being moved which
consisted of .jpg files} to /System_Data/My_Picture by the normal method of
MC file transfer.
In all 3 cases something is wiped out the partition structure. What is unknown
as at this point the issue is above my knowledge level.
In the latest incident after discovering that the computer had stall and was
completely non functional I discovered that the contents of the root
partition was corrupted.
At this point it should be noted that there was NO data on this box that was
not all so on several other boxes so saving HD data was not a consideration.
Attempts to recover and restore the system by installation of Mandrake 10.1
disk and doing a custom installation where one defined the partition showed
the existence of all partitions those being
/boot
/
<swap>
/home
/System_Data
Next stage in set up is to format partitions.
At that point the installation fails with the notice that installation could
not find the root partation.
Not being content with that I then attempted to reconfigure the partitions to
one giant HD partition with the intent of reformatting the complete HD and
then repartitioning the HD.
Results of removing /boot, <swap>, /home, and /System_Data partations was that
installation was unable to identify HD giving same error message as
previously received for root directory.
Two weeks previously I had been using MC to search for a number of test DB
that I had on the system. These test DB were all of the 1 to 5 line variety
with names all starting with test-XX where XX was 00 to 20 plus located in
half a dozen different directories having been written at various times over
several months. The object was to collect them all into one place. Anyway the
search criteria was set to start at / and I was searching for test*. Half way
through one of the directories the computer froze. Closer inspection revealed
that the root directory was trashed. Attempts to recover showed the same
conditions as noted above. System configuration unable to find root directory
and unable to format that directory.
Both of the above incidents occurred in my desktop.
Last October I was attempting to move files using MC in my laptop. Details of
what I did due to time and conditions are fuzzy so one could say a number of
things including operator error but then this was followed by two incident
where more detail observations were made.
Anyway last October the HD showed all the same symptoms as shown above. First
the root directory departed with installation unable to find the existence of
that directory and then the rest of the system departed as I attempted to
recovery from that. At that time I took the HD to a number [if memory serves
me correct 5 different groups] linux clubs meetings [1 meeting per club]
A number of real Linus and Unix people looked at it with a large variety of
different tools. The consensus of all was that that HD which did have
critical non backed up data on it was trashed and beyond salvage.
Thus my conclusion is that if other are having similar experiences that there
is something that is causing Midnight Commander in Mandrake to do something
{the details of which are above my knowledge level} that is causing
partitions to corrupt when MC is placed under heavy search of file transfer
mode.
If others are not having similar experiences then there must be something
corrupted in my Mandrake 10.1 disks. This also is something that is not
unheard of as I had that very issue with Mandrake 9.2 CDs in as much as the
system would install and run but each installation had a different set of
unexplainable omissions or failures. This after time was finally tracked down
to a bad set of CD in as much as those CD would install on some systems and
not on other identical systems.
Thank
Frank
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