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Received: by minnie.vk1xwt.ampr.org with NNTP id AA656 ; Sat, 06 Feb 93 16:01:37 EST Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd Path: sserve!manuel.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!hp9000.csc.cuhk.hk!saimiri.primate.wisc.edu!caen!uwm.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!infoserv!lila!dorsey From: dorsey@lila.com (Bill Dorsey) Subject: Re: /usr won't mount Message-ID: <C1x7oJ.Kv@lila.com> Sender: usenet@lila.com Reply-To: dorsey@lila.com Organization: Yoyodyne Propulsion Systems, Inc. References: <C1vEFJ.2oJ@lila.com> Date: Thu, 4 Feb 1993 10:55:31 GMT Lines: 27 Earlier I posted an article detailing problems I had installing the new patch- kit (to patch 75) on my system. Mount was failing on my /usr filesystem com- plaining of a bad magic number in the superblock. Well, I think I managed to track down the problem. When my disk was last partitioned, the individual who partitioned it (who shall remain nameless, but it wasn't me) did not align the partitions with cylinder boundaries. For some reason, the original wd.c driver didn't seem to mind and the system worked fine for many months. Upon installing the patches to wd.c (I forget the patch number) that made it work with partitions that aren't aligned with cylinder boundaries, the system would fail to mount the affected filesystems. My bet is that the original code may have rounded or otherwise munged the starting and ending block pointers of the filesystems created on partitions not aligned with cylinder boundaries. When I installed the patch to wd.c, it presumably calculated the correct starting and ending block pointers and then failed to mount because it found something other than a superblock at the offset it expected to find the superblock. Nothing a few hours of time spent backing up and restoring my system couldn't fix. --- Bill Dorsey "Most people mistake law for justice and authority for dorsey@lila.com liberty. You will hear them talk of 'liberty under law,' PGP 2.x public and they are content to see it so deep under the law that key on request it is completely obliterated." -- Herbert Spencer