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Kocil

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What is magic about .term_color ?

Dear experts.

I have a wierd problem, that this command

echo "any_string" > .term_color

resets my Linux box !
Reset mean, the system boots immediatelly,
like if I press the reset button.
Normal shutdown procedure is by passed.

I have tried to nail this problem, but no luck.
Here are some detail.
Distro : Slackware current (10.0 ++).
Kernel : 2.4.27.
X-Windows : Xorg 6.8.1. It happens only from a GUI, not from a concole.
Window Manager : does not matter. It happens on KDE or IceWM.
Terminal : does not matter. It happens on xterm, aterm or konsole.
User : It does matter. Only on one particular user.
Root did not have the problem. I created a new user, and it was normal.

So I though, it must be something with the file on the problematic user. Here is the checking:

-----------------
## Just test to echo blue
tux@engpc23:$ echo "blue"
blue
~
## echo blue to term, normal
tux@engpc23:$ echo "blue" > term
~
## the content of term
tux@engpc23:$ cat term
blue
~
## The permission of term
tux@engpc23:$ ls -l term        
-rw-r--r--  1 tux users 5 2004-10-28 10:44 term

## Nor the problematic file, the content is blue
tux@engpc23:$ cat .term_color
blue
~
## and the permission is allright too
tux@engpc23:$ ls -l .term_color
-rw-r--r--  1 tux users 5 2004-10-28 10:03 .term_color
~
## If I do this, system will reset !
tux@engpc23:$ echo "blue" > .term_color

-------------------

Could you give me a clue, what is going wrong here ?

Avatar of wesly_chen
wesly_chen
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Can you try
echo "blue" > ./.term_color
to see what happen?

Wesly
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Kocil

ASKER

It resets the computer.

This one too
echo "blue" > $HOME/.term_color
How about echo "yellow" >> /tmp/.term_color?
Avatar of Kocil

ASKER

Normal.

But I just found another things.
I was trying to 'clean up' the $HOME,
so I deleted some files using mc (midnight commander).
So far, I found 2 files that if I delete them, the computer resets.
- the .term_color
- another file named libhardware-0.7.4.tar.gz.

Is it a file system failure ?
I'm using reiserfs 3.6, on a RAID-1 partitions.

Still cannot believe a robust system like Linux
can be reseted by a silly things like this.

ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION
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wesly_chen
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ASKER

1. touch .term_color  --> result?
Normal, no reset.
But after that, echo "aaa" > .term_color reset the computer.

2. fuser .term_color
Nothing

3. fsck, a lot of messages like this:
bad_stat_data: The objectid (9999) is shared by at least two files, can be fixed with --rebuild-tree only

In the end, it said:
Fatal corruption were found, Semantic pass skipped
1 found corruptions can be fixed only when running with --rebuild-tree.

So what should I do now ?


Since you use RAID1 (mirror), you can try to disconnect one disk and do "fsck" to determine which disk have problem.
Then rebuild the corrupted one by using the RAID controller utility.

Wesly
Avatar of Kocil

ASKER

Ok.

I'm backing up the data first now.
It may take a long time.

I will tell you later.
Thank you very much, up to this point.
Avatar of Kocil

ASKER

Hmmm the backup is finished faster than I expected.
Turned off the RAID-1, do fsck on each harddisk
fsck /dev/hda10    -----> error
fsck /dev/hdc10    ------> error

The errors are SIMILAR.
The RAID does pretty well including duplicating the error, LOL.
Hi,

   Then check the backup to make sure everything is backup.
Re-format hda10 and restore the data and re-do RAID1.

Wesly
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ASKER

DONE.

So, nothing was magic about .term_color. :)

Thanks Wesly.