Bunch of newbie questions about mandrake 9.1
 

I'm wondering, what does "noncontigous" mean when you boot up the computer after a crash and run the "integrity scan" Also, it asks me if I want to "repair" but that I might create data loss. What exactly am I repairing and why would I lose data? I really don't understand why I had the crash in the first place. I tried to stop all my processes by typing killall5 in the console and the OS completely crashed. Using killall5 doesn't hurt my computer at all does it (or the rpms). I need to use it with Kcron because I let my trashy dial up connection download stuff through the night and I need my computer to sign off online before my dad wakes up in the morning or he gets cranky. If there is a better command or program please let me know. I have had a few crashes and wow, my heart like stops when I see the non contigious stuff, especially since the percentages are rising. Is there any scandisk type feature or anything that I can use on my system to make sure everything is okay? Sorry about how newbish these questions are but data loss to me is huge and I need to know what the deal is. Thank you for your time.
-calimer

I would just back everything up and just re-install Mandrake. It takes 15, 20 minutes tops and if you put it all on a floppy disketter or e-mail it to yourself it should all be fine.

Linux uses fdisk to scan and repair filesystems. The term "noncontigous" is the "fragmentation" of the linux filesystem and is nothing to worry about.

Check out the at command and schedule /sbin/ifdown ppp0 before he gets up. It only works once, though

Another way is to put a job in crontab and it will run repeatedly at the time scheduled.

Check out these commands:

man <command>
info <command>

Scheduling in Linux

If not contigous is fragmentation, is there a way for me to defrag? I'm not very familiar with linux system tools and such. Also, I don't think if ppp0 will work for me since I use penggy to dial up aol and it isn't a ppp protical. It really bothers me that killall5 crashed me today when I've used it before without a problem and also according to it's "man" data, it shouldn't crash me, hmm. To Ekim, I definitely don't think I need to reinstall. That is a bit drastic for only have a few computer crashes. Thank you for your time.
-calimer