System Crash

[Jonathan Hutchins]

On Thursday 21 August 2003 10:48 am, Peter Amisano wrote:

> Last night I was updating my web site via ftp and telnet.  I walked away
> for a bit came back and my box was fried.  I rebooted and got a message
> stating that the "INIT" could not be found, or something like that.

I doubt that this is a hack.  It looks very much like a hard drive crash.

If someone were going to take advantage of the un-encrypted link you were 
using to update the web site, they would most likely target the web server, 
not your workstation.  

I haven't heard of any hacks that scramble the init sequence.  Doesn't seem 
like it woudl be a very useful hack, and a DOS on one workstation isn't much 
of a coup either.

I would try using your original install CD as an emergency boot/repair disk 
and see what you can recover on the disk.  If you were using ext3 or some 
other journaling system, and it was a power crash not a disk crash you may 
actually be ok.