The last couple of days my computer started intermittantly freeze, I dialed it down to a bad power connector. I plugged a new one into the drive, but before booting i decided to check the ReiserFS with Reiserckfs. I did Reiserfsck --check and it tell me anything except that I should try --rebuild tree so I did. I figured with all improper shutdowns that it couldn't hurt. Huh, now I cannot boot properly, it says that thing s are improperly formatted and the like. However I can acces my files through knoppix.

Any suggestions on how to fix this major foul-up. Thanks in advance.

try running it with --fix-fixable, it might help...

the thing with "--rebuild-tree" is that you shouldn't run it unless you need to...

when you ran "--rebuild-tree", did it give you error messages??

from "man reiserfsck":

Thanks for the reply. Yes, it did give me errors. It said that therre were errors in a lot of files and that it was changing them.

I tried --fix-fixable. However, to no avail.

I Chowned my root dir through knoppix and now it shows nothing in it. I think that I've just dug too deep a hole to work out of. I think I might put a another HD in and transfer some of the files that I can get to.

Any replies would be helpful, thanks.

[cough-cough] BUMP!

once you retrieve your docs, zero the drive... then partition, format, install...

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hdx

Thanks for your help. I bought a Western Digital 250 GB w/ 8m buffer at Fry's (they were on sale for 120 bucks). I'm transfering the files onto it then I'm going to reformat the messed up one. Then I'm going to transfer the files off my 250 gig and delete everything off that and use it to store all my media. I figure that way when I do something dumb again it won't hurt so bad. By the way what do yo mean by zeroing? Thanks again.

outputting nothing but zeros to the hard drive... this effectively wipes everything clean...

some call it "low-level formatting" (though that's debatable)...

an analogy:

imagine your hard disk is a beach... now imagine a tractor with a huge rake behind it...he comes to create neat lines on the beach from end to end... the truck is preparing the sand for everyone to come and write on it... that's formatting a filesystem on your drive...

now imagine the same beach where everybody's writing on the formatted sand... for some reason, a group of people decide to do nasty stuff to the sand (corruption)... like, they bring some crazy motorcycles and mess-up all the sand... eveything is so messed-up that the people have to call the tractor with the rake again... the tractor arrives, but the sand is so messed-up now that the rake isn't really getting rid of all the damage the motorcycles made... now we have a situation where the people can come to the beach and write on the sand, but the experience won't be the same as it was before the motorcycles messed-everything up...

so the people on the beach call Mr. Zero, and he arrives at the beach with a super-heavy-duty tractor and a super-heavy-duty rake behind it to get deep into the sand where the regular rake wouldn't go... he rakes the entire beach profoundly and with industrial-strength, making sure that not one square foot of sand doesn't get unturned and that any rocks or broken glass (the bikers were drinking beer) or any foreign object is completely removed... the deep tire tracks and other deep holes dissapear... that's zeroing your drive...

of course, after Mr. Zero leaves, then the regular tractor (filesystem format) can come in and prepare the sand once again, and the lines will be like new for all the people on the beach... and eveybody's happy...

Great, thanks for your help. It's good to have a resource like this where people can help each other out.