Unusual filesystem/memory corruption

[Mike Brownlow <mike@wsmake.org>]

I run debian/unstable and I know the risks involved with that.

Woke up and I found my computer to seem to be operating normally.  The
screensaver was on and running. I clicked the mouse to turn it off and
my normal apps were still running. I used xmms open->dir to pop in some
mp3s, and the filesystem it listed was:

/
  (blank)
  (blank)
  (blank)
  (blank)
  !
  Omp
  a
  d
  d
  g
  pRac
  sbin
  v
  v

This was rather unusual so I went to an open eterm to use ls. But ls
couldn't be found. I also had two emacs open, and I was going to use
them to browse around the filesystem, but they died when I tried to use
C-x C-f. Odd. So I went to one of my eterms and tried scrolling through
the buffer using the mouse wheel. This caused the eterm to die. I'm not
sure where eterms store their buffer, but now I started to suspect
memory corruption.

So I rebooted in hopes that the filesystem thing was just memory
corruption. Nope. Something has really messed the fs up. Before I restore
from backups, I'd like to isolate what happened. And I'm wondering if
anyone has seen this kind of problem recently?

I can give whatever hardware/software configurations if needed, but
holding short for now. Here's a summary of the problem:

 * Happened overnight
 * Most recent significant OS change was a dselect update/install
   (last night)
 * Most recent hardware change was a new stick of ram
   (now about .5 months old)
 * I used the SCSI controller recently (yesterday) to access my
   CDR. I use the "old AIC7xxx" in the kernel because the new driver
   doesn't boot.
 * hdparm options: -m16 -d1
 * Machine is behind firewall, and has few services for external
   access

I suspect hardware failure caused it, but there are still a few software
unknowns. I'm starting to lean on corruption due to using -m16 for
hdparm. Any other suggestions appreciated...

All I can think of for now. Going to quarantine the drive. :)

-- 
Mike Brownlow           ><>          http://www.wsmake.org/~mike/
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