Bad block prohibits Xenix boot.

[Karl Denninger]

This kind of thing comes up often enough to be worth a posting...

In article <588 at marob.MASA.COM> daveh at marob.masa.com (Dave Hammond) writes:
>Problem:	Bad block prohibits Xenix boot.
>System:		Everex 286 with Maxtor 70Mb drive, running SCO 2.2.1
>Background:
>
>While uucp-ing a 5+ Mb file from a remote to this machine, a rash of
>'No swap' and 'Bad block' errors invade the console, accompanied by
>a loud, continuous "whine-click-whine" noise.

You're in trouble.  The disk is damaged; at least one sector is defective. 
The "whine-click-whine-click" cycle is the controller recalibrating the
drive in a last-ditch attempt to recover from a hard error on the drive.

>Questions:
>
>The first is the obvious--can I reclaim use of the root filesystem without
>reloading Xenix?  (my guess is "no")

Probably not.  From your description it appears that the bad sector(s) are
in the superblock or worse (partition table?!)  It is also entirely possible
that the entire disk has failed you; if the read amplifier (or controller)
has crapped out you'll get this kind of symptom.  A bad cable can also cause 
it too (but this is much less likely as I'm assuming you haven't moved anything
while the machine was running).

>The second is--what situation did uucp get into which allow random writing
>into seemingly "sacred" disk areas?

It didn't.  Your disk or controller (or both) has died.  I'd try a reformat
first; but make sure it's a LOW LEVEL format (not just a destructive
installation; say "yes" when asked if you wish to reformat).

If reformatting fails, you'll need to obtain a new controller or disk.

--
Karl Denninger (karl at ddsw1.MCS.COM, ddsw1!karl)
Data: [+1 312 566-8912], Voice: [+1 312 566-8910]
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