e2fsck trashed system; chroot now failing

[nori heikkinen <nori@sccs.swarthmore.edu>]

i booted up my laptop to check my email this evening, and e2fsck
declares it's been 22 mounts or more and starts chugging away.  it
dies, so i knoppix-boot and manually e2fsck -y the thing so i don't
have to sit there and babysit it.  it finishes, so i reboot and take
the knoppix CD out.

but it kernel-panics -- "no init found."  so i knoppix back in, mount
my root partition, and lo an behold, my system's trashed.  instead of
bin/ dev/ etc/ et cetera, i see lines upon lines of:

#1030177  #163      #196286  #210     #354     #376679  #387     #886
#1046529  #164      #196287  #212577  #355     #376680  #388     #887
#1062892  #165      #196288  #212578  #356     #376681  #389     #888
#107      #166      #196292  #212588  #357     #376682  #390     #889
#108      #1667909  #196294  #224     #358     #376683  #391     #890
...

all my system files and everything are in these directories and
folders.  it feels as though my house has been broken into and
trashed, or something!

so i start going through the ones that are directories, and seeing
what i can recognize.  so far i've got:

bin  boot  dev  etc  home  root  sbin  usr  var vmlinuz

the vmlinuz i linked myself, to boot/2.4.20-1-686.

but still no dice.  Chroot seems to be the thing with the problem:

mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /devfs/root2, or
       too many mounted filesystems
pivot_root: No such file or directory
chroot: /sbin/init: No such file or directory
Kernel panic: Attempted to kill init!

i've never heard of /devfs, let alone root2.

help?  i *really* don't want to reinstall this from scratch ... but i
will if i have to.

thanks a lot,

</nori>

-- 
    .~.      nori @ sccs.swarthmore.edu
    /V\  http://www.sccs.swarthmore.edu/~nori/jnl/
   // \\          @ maenad.net
  /(   )\       www.maenad.net
   ^`~'^
            get my (*new*) key here:
   http://www.maenad.net/geek/gpg/7ede5499.asc
      (please *remove* old key 11e031f1!)