Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with corruption

I'm taking it back. I'm taking them all back.

orville sash — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 05:07:11 -0800

Help me recover a corrupt .wav file by modifying the header! I recorded something using a Marantz PMD 620, but when I copied it to my computer, it shows the length as 0:00. Apparently, this is a known issue (see the comment on the device). (See also)

So the file is perfectly good, but the header information on the length of the file is bad. I tried downloading goldwave to see if I could recover it using that, but GoldWave tells me "internal data size incorrect. The file may be corrupt."

I feel like I should be able to recover the file if I can rewrite the header. Unfortunately, I have no idea what I am doing when it comes to hex, or headers. I do have good files also recorded with the device on my computer that I can use as reference. Can you guys please hope me?

Can long uptime cause server corruption?

joecacti — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 08:42:26 -0800

Is there any documentation out there showing that sometimes (memory) corruption can occur when servers are left running for 6+ months? I'm in charge of a production system that recently experienced a production error, one that was eventually corrected with a system reboot. The error was in a .NET application on IIS, and the current theory is that there was some sort of corruption on the server, maybe some memory corruption, caused by the system being running for more than 6 months without a reboot. Is that possible? I've tried google searches without success...

Stories of local and national shennanigans

reenum — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 12:07:17 -0800

I want to read investigative reports exposing corruption or scandal on a local or national level. Please provide me with links. Over the past few months, I've become obsessed with investigative and explanatory journalism. I'm currently plowing through the Pulitzer Prize winning stories I can find in each category.

I've read story after story dealing with corruption, shady dealings, abuses of power, etc. and I want more on an ongoing basis. Examples include the FPP post on the Blue I submitted yesterday, the Tampa Tribune's investigation into Scientology, the Seattle Times' look at improper sealing of court records, and the like,

I've been going around to different newspaper websites in an effort to try and build a collection of links to their investigations or special reports sections. Problem is, a lot of these papers have buried these stories deep in the website.

This is where you guys come in. I'd like links to as many magazine and newspaper investigations or special reports you can muster. Ideally, the link will be a repository of such stories (such as this). But, links to individual investigations, blogs that document these sorts of stories, anthologies, books, etc. are also appreciated.

I know we have a few librarians in here, and your expertise would be most appreciated as well.

Thanks to all!

Little deaths 4kb at a time

arniec — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 09:27:59 -0800

Is my data gone? Convoluted data storage question involving two Macs, a Drobo, and some file permission errors... Question on possible recovery options, and questions on how to stop it from happening again. I have recently switched to a mostly Mac household, with one Windows XP machine and one Windows laptop still around.

For data storage I picked up a Drobo and put in 3 1TB disks on it. I have it hooked to a Mac Mini on the network so it can be used for data storage. I have been moving files off my primary machine (a Macbook Pro) to the Drobo when space was needed on my hard drive.

I have gone back to get some of that data and I cannot get to it. I get the error message:

Item "itemName" is used by Mac OS X and cannot be opened.

I have tried opening these files from my Macbook Pro, from the Mac Mini where the Drobo is directly connected, I've tried moving the files to a new location, opening the files, etc. and I keep getting that same message.

I have checked and even reset all the file permissions to ensure my account does have rights but still the file won't open.

Now it appears many of the files are only 4k or 8k making me think that something went wrong. I'm guessing these files are names only taking up the minimum possible space on the disk and that my data is gone...is that right?

But I don't know if something went wrong when moving the data to the Drobo, when just being stored on the Drobo, or something else. Has anyone encountered anything like this at all?

seeking books or articles on corruption in large building projects, ancient to modern

IndigoJones — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 06:36:50 -0800

Seeking books or articles on corruption in large building projects, ancient to modern. Any large construction project is going to have shavers, chiselers, sharpies, crooks, incompetants, opportunists. You expect it. I'm looking for anything describing these shenanigans, from overpriced and shoddy material, to deliberate slowdowns, work that had to be redone, hard bargaining to extortion, and of course, pure theft. Even murder, why not? Time and place are no bar, everything is welcome, desirable even, from pyramids to Freedom Tower. I want to know about the architects, contractors, financiers, government officials and parasites, the men whose low character makes the price of magnificence what it is in an imperfect world. (The heroes in the face of crap are also welcome, but I want exposé more than hagiography, and buildings more than, say, railroads. That said, I trust your judgement.)

Closest I can come up with are things like Caro on Robert Moses, McCullough on Brooklyn Bridge and train tracks. Fictionwise, Pillars of the Earth and Atlas Shrugged are noted. But I'm hoping you can do better. Anything you can think of - books, articles, documentaries - is welcome. Extra points for older.

(On afterthought - forseeable natural problems also welcome (libraries build without calculating weight of books, shifting foundations, etc) But mostly human moral failure.)

What countries have laws or legislative rules requiring legislation to stay on-topic?

LightStruk — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 14:25:42 -0800

What countries have laws or legislative rules requiring legislation to stay on-topic? Like many American citizens, I'm frustrated with the tendency of our elected officials to attach unrelated earmarks and amendments to "must-pass" legislation. Almost invariably, such additions are not in the country's best interest, but they aren't removed from the legislation because either there's no time (it's MUST PASS LEGISLATION!), it's buried in a bill that's thousands of pages long, or no one will vote against the whole bill because of some silly earmark.

What democracies have rules in place requiring legislation to stay on-topic to prevent this kind of abuse? How well are those rules working?

I seem to recall that one of Australia's legislative bodies instituted just such a rule recently, but no amount of Google-fu is helping me find it.

Automated detection of corrupted files.

nowonmai — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 11:31:39 -0800

I have about 100 gigabytes of MP3 files on my iPod that have been passaged through several iPods and failing laptop hard drives, and about 10% of the tracks have become corrupted and have little audible glitches in them. That's really annoying. Does this kind of damage leave behind some kind of tell-tale signature that I could get my computer to search for and give me a list of tracks that need re-ripping? Is there some kind of Mac (or at a pinch other OS) program that can identify the dodgy tracks? Or do I just need to spend however many hundred hours listening with pen and paper at hand?

What is the best personal data backup scheme?

burnfirewalls — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 12:06:04 -0800

My data backup procedure is in shambles. What is the best personal data backup scheme to protect my data? My data backup procedure is in shambles, which is partly my fault and partly some ongoing hardware issues. I'll do my best to detail the issues. I've gone through Ask MeFi but I can't find a recent, definitive answer.

I've got a Windows XP desktop, which is the only reliable computer in the house. I've attached two identical external hard drives, each 500 GB. Until now, we've (Mrs. burnfirewalls and I) been saving everything important to one of the external hard drives, and then I manually copy all of that over to the second hard drive once a week or so.

This provides no data redundancy, in the case that the files on the first drive get corrupted.

The backup is also dependent on the operator (me) not being lazy.

Compounding the problem is that my computer will routinely not recognize the USB drives - every other time my computer is booted, it hangs in BIOS loading until I unplug the drives, and I have to then unplug and replug the power cords on the USB hard drives after Windows is booted. I also have issues with other USB devices. If I don't plug my printer into the exact same USB port every time, it re-installs the drivers. The two issues may not be related, but I wanted to include relevant details and not jump to conclusions.

I also need to retrieve the files off of three old devices - an unreliable Sony Vaio laptop, an old external hard drive, and an old internal hard drive - and incorporate the files into my backup. This is not a major issue since I have external hard drives, but, again, I want to lay out the whole problem.

The things that I absolutely need to protect from hard drive failure, file corruption, and my apartment building setting on fire are my personal photos/videos, my writing, my wife's project folder, and our website backups. Commercial music, videos, and all that shit is much, much less of a priority.

So, in short, what are your recommendations for automatic backup software (points if it doesn't require me to use said backup software to retrieve files later), offsite backups, and anything else that will keep my data safe?

Money's not a huge obstacle if it means an end to my anxiety over this!

Which industries are corrupt?

roxegirl — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 20:17:39 -0800

With the current financial crisis highlighting corruption within the banking and auto industries, I'm starting to wonder about other industries that might be a little below the radar. What industries are generally corrupt? The chemical industry?
pharmaceuticals?

Here's how my mac widget dictionary defines corrupt: having or showing a willingness to acct dishonestly in return for money or personal gain.

Mac screen artifacts causing a headache

tanc — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 14:49:33 -0800

I'm getting some weird artifacts/corruptions appearing on my macbookpro screen. Any explanations? I've tried googling this, but as my description of what's happening is quite vague I haven't had any success...

It's been happening for a while. Here are two screenshots I took of different artifacts that are happening. 1 2

Generally the artifacting occurs within a specific window, although sometimes it occurs across windows.

I have an external monitor plugged in and it occurs on both my laptop screen and the external monitor.

I thought maybe it was due to how long I leave my computer on - it's often a week or two between reboots, but it's happening now and my uptime is less than 2 days...

It seems to start on video windows (quicktime) or tetris (Quinn) the most, but that may be due to those being my most common activities...

It doesn't happen constantly, but will come and go. At the moment it seems to be appearing for a few seconds and then going again, but sometimes it won't go unless I close a windows or somehow force a screen refresh. (I was typing this the screen became obscured by a large yellow block)

Any suggestions of how I can prevent it without the pain of a reboot/trip to an apple store?

Corrupt Data in Docs - Oh No

bleucube — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 13:06:26 -0800

We have some file corruption on our network drive. Need to search through 1 TB worth of data.... How can I? Example insider. Files corrupted are .doc, .pdf, and some .wpd. Most of the files open fine but they are filled with squares. I thought I could use agent ransack and find files that have a column of squares but when I cut and paste the agent ransack text is blank and it will not search.

See pic for example : here

The only common denominator is the created date is well after the last modified date on the file.

The file system is traditional NTFS (windows).

Any help to find contents of empty files that are random in size, time, date - would be much appreciated!

Shocking! True! Stories!

Nonce — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 05:35:35 -0800

Please point me towards true stories of small-town corruption. I recently watched this episode of The Rockford Files, and I loved it. I've always had something of a fascination with stories of rural corruption involving multiple people, particularly if one or more participants represent The Law in some capacity (judges, sheriffs, etc.).

Please point me towards similar stories that also happen to be true. In print, online, or on video are all fine.

Serious MySQL table repair help

Mo Nickels — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 13:22:20 -0800

Are there uncommon ways to repair a corrupt MySQL table? I have a MySQL database that is experiencing some serious corruption. Using the standard instructions, I have repaired all of the tables but one. No matter how many ways I try those instructions on the ornery table, in all cases either a) nothing happens or b) the data file is emptied, which is, obviously, not the result I want. I linked to the instructions above because I wanted to make it plain I have tried *all* of the instructions there, on two different servers (one BSD, one Mac OS X), and have had no joy including use of "REPAIR TABLE tbl_name USE_FRM"). Also, I do not have a good backup. I have only the corrupt database table to work with (it's somebody else's server--they are highly unsavvy).

In its default corrupt state, I get the following when I check the file:

check  	warning  	Size of datafile is: 4791392       Should be: 0

check 	error 	Wrong bytesec: 0-0-0 at linkstart: 0

check 	error 	Corrupt

The "should be" size is wrong. This means there's some discrepancy between the MYD, MYI, and .FRM files. If I repair the file with MySQL, I get

repair  	info  	Wrong bytesec:   0-  0-  0 at 0; Skipped

repair 	status 	OK

This makes the file 0 bytes, which is wrong. Then I restore the copy of the corrupt file and try all the steps on the MySQL repair page. They do not solve the problem, so I am looking for other ideas and other solutions.

Extracting phantom files from old CDRW

benzenedream — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 12:50:41 -0800

I have a legacy CDRW which shows up empty when mounted in either Linux or Windows. Extracting an iso image under linux via dd yields greppable strings which indicate files are hiding inside. How do I extract the files without knowing what format or filesystem they are in? Mounting the iso as a loop device in Linux yields no listable files. This disc is from ~2000. I assume the final FAT written to the disc is either corrupt or unreadable but files are written earlier on the disc. Is there a "file boundary guesser" that I can pipe the ISO to, which will spit out the possible files?

Constant corruption - and I'm not even talking about the government!

twiggy — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 13:42:44 -0800

I have a few mysql tables that keep repeatedly getting corrupted - help! I'm running a website that uses OSCommerce, though that in particular may not be relevant to my problem. The sessions and whos_online tables both seem to keep getting corrupted. I run myisamchk -r on them (even after stopping mysql server altogether in order to do so, just in case) and they're fine for a very short while (measured in minutes, not even hours) and then both keep getting corrupted again.

I've rebooted the server (Red Hat linux), I've tried dropping the tables and recreating their structure, and I'm now at my wit's end.

I figured a reboot would run fsck to see if it was a disk issue. I must plead ignorance here -- I'm an amateur when it comes to being a sysadmin, and I built this box so long ago I don't remember if it ran fsck on boot automatically, or if some other job checks first if it should run fsck, or what... Anway, I looked a boot.log and see no record of fsck being run.

Anyone know what might be causing this, or what else I can look into? My understanding is that I can't run fsck on a mounted file system so I'm not sure what to do.

Prove me wrong

MrMulan — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 06:07:11 -0800

Are US high schools graduation rates for private, parochial, and target schools real? Please prove the cynic in me wrong.

Anecdotally,
-My wife and I both went to separate catholic high schools, with everybody graduating.
-A colleague of mine who went to private school said everyone graduated.

The graduation rate at SuccessTech Academy in Ohio where there was a shooting, the graduation rate is 94% vs 55% for the districts it's in.

However, in my case the school expelled some people in their senior year for bad behavior.
In my wife's case, the school "requested" that certain students not come back for their senior year, for poor academic performance.

My BS detector tells me something is off. You have institutions that put forth graduation and attendance rates, students that go on to college, ect. as prime factors as to why the school is great. These same institutions have the ability to manipulate these rates. Then they are compared to public schools that do not have the same ability for manipulation.

Please prove me wrong.

"The young die young that they may avoid corruption. The old live long that they may repent."

Pater Aletheias — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 09:42:16 -0800

Can anyone identity the source of this saying? "The young die young that they may avoid corruption. The old live long that they may repent." That may not be the exact wording. Do you know of a line like it? That's all the information I have. TIA

Where can I find the most thorough indictment of the Bush administration and its activities to date?

Lockeownzj00 — Mon, 14 May 2007 12:33:21 -0800

In light of a recent mefi post, I'd like to ask a question I've been meaning to ask for a long time. Where can I find the most thorough indictment of the Bush administration and its activities to date? I'm looking for a complete rundown of the crimes and corruption of the administration (and the GOP). I'm looking for where they've been taking this country and why it's the wrong way. I'm looking for what they're doing right under everybody's noses.

I'm looking for something that goes beyond making fun of Bush's funny face or stuttering or what have you. I want to dig deep and get my hands dirty with this stuff, but I don't want to read dense paragraphs of technical language and minor discrepancies in laws. I want it to be systematic, with as little extrapolation (that is to say, as much hard evidence) as possible. I want it to be relentless and scathing, but not obstinate or unreadable.

And I don't want it to be too long (man, am I idealistic or what?).

What I mean to say is, preferably something I could find online. I'm pretty swamped as far as books go. Obviously you can't do all this in a paragraph--but I don't want a 500 page book on my hands right now . I'm thinking more, "exposé of anywhere from 10 to 30 pages."

So, ask mefi: where can I go? Where can I turn? Maybe it would be a compilation of sources? Help!

Get me back to Canada.

Totally Zanzibarin' Ya — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 06:44:38 -0800

How much is the going bribe for a Mexican police officer? I'll be travelling to Mexico soon and was wondering how much I should bribe the local authorities if I happen to get pulled over/stopped about something. How exactly do I give a bribe?

Or should I avoid the whole bribe thing altogether?

How do I help someone achieve justice after he was attacked at gunpoint by the Sheriff's buddy?

univac — Tue, 21 Nov 2006 19:38:43 -0800

A close relative was attacked, beaten and threatened at gunpoint, and the Sheriff and DA are protecting the attacker. How do we use litigation and/or publicity to force accountability? A close relative was attacked, beaten and threatened at gunpoint in a very rural area. Help was sought from passersby, one of whom turned out to be the attacker's wife (so much for witnesses). When the Sheriff was summoned, he stated that he had known the attacker for ages, and that it was lucky he didn't shoot. The attacker was not arrested. I don't want to give too much detail here, but trust me when I say the attack was unprovoked. Now, the DA refuses to prosecute and Sheriff's department is not inclined to discipline the Sheriff.

I have confirmed that the victim wishes to pursue this, and not let it drop. My family is at a loss as to what to do. There was a meeting with a civil attorney, but he was not interested in the case.

I'd like to know how to make sure that the attacker is prosecuted and that the Sheriff is held accountable. I am interested in pursuing recourse through the legal process, but I am also interested in bringing public attention to the situation in order to pressure the relevant agencies to do the right thing.

How do I need to change my workflow and FCP configuration to work with 24p DV footage?

tweebiscuit — Sun, 01 Oct 2006 16:49:14 -0800

DV / Final Cut Pro question: We just upgraded cameras to a Panasonic DVX100B, largely for the ability to shoot in 24P. However, imported footage still appears interlaced in FCP, and it's unclear to me what our new configuration should be. How will we need to change our workflow in order to edit in 24P? (More specific inside.) On an unrelated note, we just imported a tape which appears to be corrupted. Can it be salvaged? (More details inside.) Regarding the progressive setup, I basically just need some stronger working knowledge about what we can and can't do working with 24P footage. Some specifics:

1) Do we need separate capture settings? "DV NTSC - 24" is a sequence preset, but not a capture preset -- there is, however, a capture setting called "DV NTSC 48 kHz Advanced (2:3:3:2) Pulldown Removal". Is this what we need to use?

2) Can we capture the 24p footage on a different DV camera that does not have a 24p mode?

The confusing part: We did two projects shot in 24p before realizing that we couldn't use the default DV settings anymore. The footage so imported looks fine, but it's interlaced. (In addition to using the default, interlaced 29.97 sequence setting, at least some of the footage was also captured on a non-24p camera.) The part I don't understand is why it doesn't look worse -- since 24p footage has a different timebase, I can't imagine it being displayed sensibly in a 29.97-timebase sequence. Or is Panasonic's 24p method backwards-compatible enough that it cleanly displays as interlaced 29.97 footage when captured as such? (Of course, it's possible that the footage from these projects has problems that we haven't noticed -- we publish directly to the internet, so we don't pay as close attention to footage quality as broadcast folks do.)

As for the corrupted video: The video on the first two shots is divided into 6 or 8 horizontal bars, half of which contain no video signal. FCP crashes upon trying to import. I am pretty much resigned that it was a tape-writing error that's unrecoverable, but figured I'd ask -- is there any chance to salvage this footage? It was on a clean tape, the corruption ends precisely when the last corrupted shot ends, and it displays as such in two different cameras, both of which have had their heads cleaned recently.

getting back at the mayor

Anonymous — Sun, 22 Jan 2006 22:55:32 -0800

RevengeFilter: Help me get back at my town's corrupt mayor. A few months back a relative of mine, who is a city employee, told me that he had gone to his supervisor to ask for a promotion and had been told, upfront that a promotion would cost him a $5,000.00 donation to the mayor's re-election campaign. I was disgusted but not surprised, as the mayor has been in trouble for influence peddling before. As my relative was not interested in getting involved in any investigation, I've kept the information to myself (ordinarily I'm an unstoppable blabbermouth, but I love my relative and don't want to bring him any grief).
Recently however, to please land developers who are major contributors to the mayor's electioneering campaigns, the mayor has made a decision that will impact the value of my parent's home and possibly have a negative impact on a nearby bird sanctuary.
Here's what I need: how do I drop the dime on the mayor without impacting my relative? Both of the local daily newspapers are in the mayor's pocket, and while the weekly alternative does some good reporting it rarely has much impact. This is, by the way, in the US.

itunes is messed up!

asavage — Tue, 26 Jul 2005 12:02:04 -0800

Help! My itunes is acting funny. About every 4 minutes, my itunes throws up this dialog box:

Searching for movie data in file Orig_00388eb3.IETemp

Then a second dialog box appears that says:

The movie file
"Orig_00388eb3.IETemp" cannot
be found. Without this file, the
movie cannot play properly.

Once this pair of dialog boxes show up, any song list that's playing stops at the end of the song it's currently playing. This is driving me nuts. It seems worse when I'm ripping a CD.

I'm assuming I've got some kind of corrupted file on my computer, but I've removed everything I can think of, and nothing has helped. I'm running the latest itunes, along with the latest update of tiger.

And BTW, there's nothing I can find in the Apple Support library that helps either.

When RAID arrays go bad

holgate — Tue, 05 Apr 2005 19:58:06 -0800

The 2x250Gb RAID1 array on my desktop system (WinXP) started throwing up 'Delayed write failure' errors and forcing mirroring on reboot. I unplugged the HDs and reinstalled Windows, but suspect a hardware failure. What's the best way to run diagnostics while minimising the risk of corrupted data being mirrored across? Plug in each drive separately, detach the array, or re-mirror and hope for the best?

External USB Hard Drive FAT32 corruption via Mac OS 9!

loquacious — Tue, 21 Dec 2004 14:55:33 -0800

External USB Hard Drive FAT32 corruption via Mac OS 9! Help me Obi-Wan Kenobe! (More inside) I have an 80gb AcomData HD which has - until now - worked flawlessly. The other night I mounted it on a Mac OS 9 machine to transfer some graphics files, and now it no longer is even recognizable or moubtable to any of my Windows machines. (98/2K/XP). I'm thinking my mistake was dragging the mounted drive to the trash to unmount it rather than just yanking the cable or shutting it down like you're not supposed to.

Are there any Windows disk utilities that can repair the FAT without losing the data even though I can't even properly mount the damn thing?

(And despite this, I still recommend AcomData. The web support requires an account/login, but the call-in support was excellent. I got a sharp fellow who abandoned any scripted solution the instant I began articulating my problem in detail and my troubleshooting procedures thus far. That's wonderfully refreshing these days.)

Thanks in advance! (Wanders off to try to mount it in knoppix)