Short title for a probably scary problem.

I’ve managed to reduce the disk space usage on /dev/hda7 to 38%. The thing is, I’m pissed, and very scared I’ve just deleted something I shouldn’t.

Normally, I can’t get it below 45%. I’ve “backed up” the system logs, but I do that often (well, once every 6 months) and I’ve never had it below 41$, at the least.

There was, however, a 400Mb backup file that had crept in - that’s gone now. But it wasn’t there before.

This is quite scary, as I’ve already killed one linux box tonight.

I’m talking about the PVR Box. I burned a new ISO of the knoppmyth distro, and installed it. It needed setting up friom scratch, and I remembered all of the combinations to get the PVR-250 telly card working again

Then. When everything was working great, I thought I’d fsck it. You know. For a laugh. As you do. It warned me that running FSCK on mounted partitions would cause SEVERE corruption of EVERYTHING. EVER.

I didn’t believe it, and so continued to run it. My “oh” could be heard from 250ft away, as I realiseed it was serious, and because I was logged in as root, no safeguards were in place. The machine crashed specacularly. Instantly, 100% usage on the important partitions.

So, I ran FSCK. What damage could I do? Fuck all, that’s what. Definitely nothing a reboot couldn’t solve. I’m so naive.

It DID, quite literally fuck up the filesystem in every way, shape and form. Kernel panics galore. In fact it was the exact same kernel panic I experienced when I attempted to install it on an unpartitioned drive. Or, at least a drive I’d pursoely sabotaged, then attempted to boot. can’t remember the exact details because I thought I’d never see it again.

I spent most of today learning about mythtv in general. From what I can see, this going to be one hell of qa learning curve. But on the plus side, it’s the first full-scale use I’ve had for a linux box. And, I guess, it’ll start me on the road to learning it full-time.

Either way, if it does, or it doesn’t, it supplied a practical use for an ageing 1.2gb Athlon. This *is* the first ever Linux project I want to get my teeth into.