[lug] superblock erased by windows. Help!

[John Karns]

On Mon, 26 Feb 2001, D. Stimits said:

>I just checked my own instructions, apparently the "-r" is no longer
>supported. I don't know if lack of the "-p" will end up being manual or
>not. Certainly a "-v" for verbose could help, don't know.

Usually when I have to do a manual e2fsck because of a corrupted
superblock, It has been necessary to specify an alternate superblock.  Try
it with the -b option (from the man page):

       -b superblock
              Instead  of  using  the  normal  superblock, use an
              alternative  superblock  specified  by  superblock.
              This  option  is  normally  used  when  the primary
              superblock has  been  corrupted;  most  filesystems
              have  primary  superblocks  located at blocks 8193,
              16385, etc.  If an alternative superblock is speci
              fied  and  the  filesystem is not opened read-only,
              e2fsck will make sure that the  primary  superblock
              is  updated  appropriately  upon  completion of the
              filesystem check.

It would seem doubtful that Windows was the culprit.  Perhaps Linux didn't
dismount the filesytem normally the last time you were using it.  I've had
that experience a few times.  Many times there is no warning displayed on
the console during shutdown / reboot when it occurs.

----------------------------------------------------------------------
John Karns                                              jkarns at csd.net