BTW, I wouldn't say that mkfs "trashed" the root partition. The only 
thing I can definitely say is that it can't boot afterwards, and it 
crashes end leaves me in the debugger during boot. That certainly seems 
to indicate that it at least affected the root partition.

If I don't figure this out soon, I'm just going to repartition with only 
a root & swap partition. I really just wanted to protect my root by 
putting the majority of my data/projects on a different partition. Uggh.

-1LT Avram Dorfman
HQ USAF Network Management
permanent email address: avram@pobox.com

"Methodological observation of the sociometrical behavior tendencies of 
prematurated isolates indicates that a causal relationship exists between 
groundward tropism and lachrimatory behavior forms."

On Wed, 8 May 1996, Ken Nakata wrote:

> > Here's how I built a new fs on just the usr partition:
> 
> Thanks.
> 
> > 1) ran mkfs, picked my drive's scsi id
> > 2) mkfs offered three partitions: root, usr, swap. I chose usr
> > 	these are the correct partitions.
> > 	root previously had mkfs run on it
> > 	root had devices built
> > 	root had distribution installed & booted successfully
> > 
> > In other words, the drive was already partitioned & mkfs'd (on root & 
> > usr). I re-ran mkfs on just usr for the reasons indicated below. At no 
> > point did I bother running mkfs on the swap partition.
> 
> And MKFS just trashed your root partition, right?  Hmm, not to imply I
> don't believe your story, but it's kind of hard to believe...  I
> certainly haven't encountered this kind of problem.  I'd suspect the
> SCSI bus cables and terminators, but other than that, I haven't much
> idea.
> 
> BTW, you mentioned mount complained to you to run fsck on the usr
> partition.  Did you run fsck after unmounting the usr partition?
> Running fsck on a mounted file system is extremely dangerous.
> 
> kenn
>