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Date:      Tue, 5 Sep 1995 15:41:33 -0700 (MST)
From:      Terry Lambert <terry@lambert.org>
To:        peter@taronga.com (Peter da Silva)
Cc:        terry@lambert.org, peter@taronga.com, hackers@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: Bad superblock?
Message-ID:  <199509052241.PAA24452@phaeton.artisoft.com>
In-Reply-To: <199509052102.QAA22315@bonkers.taronga.com> from "Peter da Silva" at Sep 5, 95 04:02:53 pm

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> > If the answer could be "controller failure" than the reason it doesn't
> > update the backup superblocks should be obvious.
> 
> Doesn't "sync" update the backup superblock anyway?

yes, but not the clean bit.

Consider a failure and a loss of the original superblock; to be consistent,
the backup superblock must force a fsck.

This all boils down to an issue of media perfection and the fact that
a sector failure can take out critical data at all; or in the particular
case that started this thread, the MSDOSFS can be of by two bytes and
blow your superblock.

Trying to optimize for the case of a particular know failure is a bogus
exercise.  Either fix the failure or live with the existing recovery; the
existing recovery takes a lot more failure modes than the MSDOSFS crap
into account, and losing them because a similar but not identical failure
has occured (and is thus not recoverable) is a Bad Thing(tm).

If this isn't your issue, then you don't have an issue; your superblock
is good, use it instead of trying to play with a backup.  8-).


					Terry Lambert
					terry@lambert.org
---
Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present
or previous employers.



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