> Hi, > > A client had a terrible disk problem on their /usr partition resulting > in a number of hosed files (e.g., /usr/include/ctype.h was now a > HOWTO.) > > Is there a way to tell the system to check all files belonging to all > packages and tell me which are damaged? If it could then reinstall > those packages that would be great. I reinstalled all packages I > noticed had corrupt files, but I'm sure I missed some. > > Such functionality would be useful. Klee Dienes <klee@mit.edu> has a package called dpkgcert that really helped me out - it examines every file in you system, and points out which ones differ from ones supplied in packages. Unfortunately, it needs a database of "certificates" that contain the per-file MD5 sums of all the packages (which I got from Klee). I haven't heard from him for a while, so I don't know where you can get the certificates. On a related note - I discovered that my disk corruption was happening because I had LBA and 32-bit modes (or something like that) enabled in my system BIOS. Gradually, over time, files would get corrupted like you mentioned. After learning on debian-user that this causes problems for some people, I turned the options off, and I haven't had any disk corruption since. This should probably be a FAQ somewhere - but I don't understand it myself. Cheers, - Jim
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