Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!seismo!sundc!pitstop!sun!pepper!cmcmanis
From: cmcmanis%pepper@Sun.COM (Chuck McManis)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Wierd Guru
Message-ID: <75804@sun.uucp>
Date: 2 Nov 88 17:39:45 GMT
References: <5332@saturn.ucsc.edu>
Sender: news@sun.uucp
Reply-To: cmcmanis@sun.UUCP (Chuck McManis)
Organization: Sun Microsystems, Mountain View
Lines: 61

In article <5332@saturn.ucsc.edu> odin@ucscb.UCSC.EDU (Jon Granrose) writes:
>  Over the past few days I have been fighting with a strange guru on my
>Amiga 2000...  
>         1)  8700000B.265F48F1
>         2)  87000008.265F48F1
>ShowGuru says that they are DEADEND, generated by the DOS LIBRARY and 1) is
>"key out of range" and 2) is "key already free".  

These are "disk corrupt" GURU messages. They mean that the structure of your
disk (whichever one you touched last) is corrupt and these are the GURUs
that the filesystem tasks (0x265F4851) throws up to warn you about it.
If this disk ever tried to validate it would fail and you would get the
infamous "Use DiskDoctor to Fix" message. Of course if you have a MicroBotics
StarDrive you will find a little program I wrote called MDFixer in the 
system drawer that will also fix it. Run it through "Verify FileSystem"
and it will tell you where if finds problems, use the "Rebuild FileSystem"
button to make it healthy again (I usually go for the Interactive option
because that way if it finds a corrupted file you will only lose a couple
of blocks from it rather than the whole file.) If the problem appeared 
"spontaneously" after a while I would guess you are using either "cheap"
(read single sided or "generic" disks) or you have a very old disk (check
for lines on the media where the heads rest). Otherwise it may just be 
flaky hardware. (Side note, if you don't have MDFixer, DiskSalv 1.3 will
also fix up the disk for you)

> I made a totally new startup disk from scratch and I have not received 
> a guru since then.  

You just can't use DiskCopy because that will copy corruptions like this
in place. So you need to copy the individual files. Of course you can't
do that until you have fixed the corruptions.

> Could someone enlighten me as to what could have caused this so that 
> I know what to look for in the future.  

The two most often causes of this are bad medium (the disk) or sudden
loss of power/control during a write. (eg you power off or reboot when
the disk is being written) 

>  After one of the above mentioned gurus a strange thing happened.  A file
>appeared in the directory I had been working in and I can't move it or rename
>it or copy it or do anything to it except that it shows up in the listing.

Guess what, you still have a corrupt disk. This happens when a file is
in the hashtable at the "wrong" place. See the usenet tutorial on the 
file system. (Either Bob Page or Kim Devaughn did it) Then you can use
something like Sectorama or Disked to get to that file and either delete
it or move it to it's "correct" place.

>Also, I had a directory called 'temp' and now whenever I make a directory
>called 'temp' in that directory, it doesn't show up.  Anyone care to comment?
>I don't know what to do.  Any help would again be greatly appreciated.

Fix up the disk structure. All sorts of weird things happen when it is 
broken. Sorry I can't tell you exactly what is causing it. If you are
using single sided disks this is a good time to stop using them :-)


--Chuck McManis
uucp: {anywhere}!sun!cmcmanis   BIX: cmcmanis  ARPAnet: cmcmanis@sun.com
These opinions are my own and no one elses, but you knew that didn't you.