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From: chris@gargoyle.UChicago.EDU (Chris Johnston)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards,comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: How to recover from fsck "Cannot read block"?
Message-ID: <693@gargoyle.UChicago.EDU>
Date: Wed, 15-Jul-87 11:27:59 EDT
Article-I.D.: gargoyle.693
Posted: Wed Jul 15 11:27:59 1987
Date-Received: Fri, 17-Jul-87 06:08:31 EDT
References: <412@acornrc.UUCP> <3224@cit-vax.Caltech.Edu> <3225@cit-vax.Caltech.Edu>
Reply-To: chris@gargoyle.uchicago.edu (Chris Johnston)
Organization: U. of Chicago, Computer Science Dept.
Lines: 18
Keywords: disk, fsck, help!
Xref: mnetor comp.unix.wizards:3254 comp.unix.questions:3203

In article <3225@cit-vax.Caltech.Edu> mangler@cit-vax.UUCP writes:
>In article <412@acornrc.UUCP> bob@acornrc.UUCP (Bob Weissman) writes:
>>Argh!	fsck tells us "CANNOT READ: BLK 291344".

>On a 4.[23] BSD VAX, that number is the last block-device block on a
>standard "h" partition of 291346 sectors.  There aren't BLKDEV_IOSIZE
>bytes left in the partition, so you get an error.  Make sure that you
>fsck the raw device, not the block device.

This is a bug pure and simple.

I have had this happen to me on a vax 730 and 750 on an r80, ra81,
and an eagle running Berkeley 4.2 and 4.3.  The block in question is
always a directory data block located near the end of a partition.

Note: One cannot run fsck on the raw root device!

cj