Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uflorida!haven!umd5!feldman
From: feldman@umd5.umd.edu (Mark Feldman)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next
Subject: Re: fixing bad superblocks
Keywords: NeXT bad block optical disk
Message-ID: <4611@umd5.umd.edu>
Date: 14 Mar 89 20:51:27 GMT
References: <1208@blake.acs.washington.edu>
Reply-To: feldman@umd5.umd.edu (Mark Feldman)
Organization: University of Maryland, College Park
Lines: 35

In article <1208@blake.acs.washington.edu> corey@blake.acs.washington.edu (Corey Satten) writes:
>Fixing trashed optical disk superblocks on NeXT 0.8.
>
>I have just fixed the 3rd (on campus) trashed superblock on a NeXT
>optical disk.  My current hypothesis is that shutting down via the
>power button instead of running /etc/halt is the cause.  Fortunately,
>it seems that the solution is relatively painless if you can put the
>optical disk in a machine which is either booted off a hard disk or
>booted diskless off another cube.
>

We haven't had many optical-related problems since we are running most of
our NeXTs off scsi winchesters.  

Our service-trained person had blocks eight and nine of one of his ODs
destroyed several time by what appears to be a faulty drive.  fsck with a
valid alternate superblock -- -b 16, 848, or 1680 (as Corey noted) fixed
it every time.

>
>Corey Satten
>corey@cac.washington.edu
>
>P.S.  The above posting is for the convenience of the network community.
>It is not a "comment" on NeXT quality.  In my experience NeXTs are very
>well behaved.  The two I use every day have not crashed in recent memory
>(~2 months).  Quite impressive for an initial pre-release!  Sure, I've
>sent in bugs and suggestions.  What else is new?

If you avoid the known bugs -- which should go away when 0.9 hits the
streets sometime soon -- it isn't difficult to keep a NeXT up and running.

Looking forward to 0.9...

	Mark