>Subject: Catastrophic DB failure with 4.2b1 >From: "Ben Kennedy" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >Date: Sat, 16 Aug 2003 17:17:39 -0400
>I've examined the corrupt Message Database with a hex editor, skimming >through it quickly, and have discovered some obvious garbage in it -- for >example, what appears to be a history plist from Safari, containing URLs >I was visiting last night. This coincides with my Finder exploding >earlier today. Viewing the console log, it was reporting a mal-formatted >com.apple.finder.plist. When I viewed same in a text editor, I >discovered it contained a block of random garbage in the middle of the plist. > >In essence, I think I have suffered some major filesystem damage, >probably in part due to losing power to my system a couple of times over >the past few days (during the massive power failure and subsequent >rolling blackouts that have affected a bunch of the eastern States and >Canada). Ben, It sounds to me like you had "cross-linked" files; why this happens under Mac OS X I do not know, but I do know that both Safari and Camino (the only two web browsers I use regularly) have either caused or been effected by cross-linked files in the past on my machines. If your get files cross-linking you end up with one program overwriting the data file of another program unintentionally, and there is nothing the 2nd program can do to prevent it. Due to the regularity of which I see cross-linked files in 10.2 I have developed the habit of using DiskWarrior on my HD's at least once a month, more often if I get a bad crash or suffer a power failure. (apc backups are not what they used to be...two brand new ones have failed on the first outage!) Hope you recover most of your data, and that this information helps. =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Lane Roathe, President Ideas From the Deep <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> <http://www.ifd.com> _______________________________________________________________________ There are 10 types of people in this world, those who can read binary and those who can't.
