Ubuntu 9.04 with file issues Cross posted by intent- we're supposed to compare notes on such problems - I hope.

[Oren Beck]

Hi- I have a system in front of me with Ubuntu 9.04 on it- it was
installed ext3. the part that is escapingmy understanding is
recovering from a file corruption of some sort.  Duplicate or bad
blocks is the error message.  The automatic run- in recovery mode- of
fsck dies with exit status 4.

 A manual run of fsck shows a list of what it calls multiply-claimed
blocks in several inodes. and there's aprompt asking  yor no about
cloning them.

Needless to say- I am quite aware that my lack of understanding risks
avoidable data loss. Any suggestions both on what to do and the best
training document/s so I can understand why/how this issue happened in
the first place will be appreciated. This is one of those gaps in my
understanding of Linux admin skills. Either this is so drop dead
simple that I will feel more of an idiot for not having "known" what
is going on..Or it's going to be non-trivial to recover from.

My first suggested fix was using Puppy etc and an external drive to
simply grab any unique personal files that are intact- then DBAN wipe
that drive before starting over. Which is what I cal a "Last Resort
First" tactic . I hate having to use them, but LRF type methods have
become a major mental hygiene tool for me :)

Of course- I am deeply curious if my oft preached model for data
protection- keeping the OS and Userdata on physically separate drives
would have helped here -or not..
-- 
Oren Beck

816.729.3645