After hearing all this stuff about viruses and password security I started getting nervous, so I grabbed Crack 4.1 off of the net, compiled it, and started running it over the password files of all the systems whose security I care about. On the very small password file of my personal machine it completes normally, but when I try to run it on a relatively large password file, I get a system freeze after running for around 45 minutes. The freeze appears to be completely reproducible. I thought at first that the problem might be related to the beta-test X server that I'm running, but it happens whether or not X is running. When I restart after one of these freezes, I get exactly the same message from fsck every time:
Deleted inode 281219 has zero dtime. I just made up the number, but in any case it's the same inode every time. There are no other error messages. Has any else seen anything like this? There's clearly a bug somewhere, but I don't know if the problem is more likely to be in the kernel or in my hardware. I haven't seen any other indication of any hardware problems. My system is a 200 MHz Pentium Pro, with an Adaptec 2940UW SCSI adapter, a Quantum Atlas 4.3 GB hard disk, and 80 MB of main memory (if you haven't looked at RAM prices lately, you should). I started with Debian 1.1, and have kept the kernel up to date since then by applying patches as they appeared. Other than this list, is there an "official" place to report problems like this? I'm leery of posting to the newsgroups, because when I did recently, I was hit by a flood of junk email--the reason for the anti-spam paragraph at the end of this message. -Randy -- http://cogsci.ucsd.edu/~gobbel/ NOTICE: I DO NOT ACCEPT UNSOLICITED COMMERCIAL EMAIL MESSAGES OF ANY KIND. I CONSIDER SUCH MESSAGES PERSONAL HARRASSMENT AND A GROSS INVASION OF MY PRIVACY. By sending unsolicited commercial advertising/solicitations (or otherwise on or as part of a mailing list) to me via e-mail you will be indicating your consent to paying John R. (Randy) Gobbel $1,000.00 U.S.D./hour for a minimum of 1 hour for my time spent dealing with it. Payment due in 30 days upon receipt of an invoice (e-mail or regular mail) from me or my authorized representative.
