Subject: Re: badsect work?
To: Chris G Demetriou <Chris_G_Demetriou@lagavulin.pdl.cs.cmu.edu>
From: John F. Woods <email@example.com>
Date: 03/22/1995 23:42:28
> I'd say that (given what badsect does) you shouldn't run it on a on a
> mounted file system/disk
Actually, given what badsect does, you HAVE to run it on a mounted file
system: it uses mknod() to create a bogus inode which owns the bad
sector. You then IMMEDIATELY reboot and let fsck discover that there is
a PARTICULAR kind of peculiar bogus file in a PARTICULAR directory (/BAD),
and it winks at you and asks if you want the bad block noted (by converting
the bogus inode into a real file that honestly owns the block).
All together now: EEEUUUUUUUGHGHGHGHHHH!
As the badsect manual page notes, it only works on bad blocks in the data
area. All in all, drive-based transparent mapping is much less nauseating.
Now where's that Mt. Xinu calendar...?