No subject

       -S     Write  superblock and group descriptors only.  This
              is useful if  all  of  the  superblock  and  backup
              superblocks  are corrupted, and a last-ditch recov­
              ery method is desired.  It causes mke2fs to  reini­
              tialize the superblock and group descriptors, while
              not touching the inode  table  and  the  block  and
              inode  bitmaps.   The  e2fsck program should be run
              immediately after this option is used, and there is
              no guarantee that any data will be salvageable.

Short version:  You can try and rebuild your superblock and group descriptors 
table using this flag, and not touch the inodes/inode tables.  Note that this 
IS a method of last resort, and you DO run the risk of fux0ring the data 
completely...  However, if nothing else works, it's worth a shot.

>  I get the same results using other superblocks besides 32768.  Shouldn't
> there
>  be superblocks prior to that?

Depends on the flags that your filesystem was created with -- with a default 
installation of a recent version of Debian (unstable, in fact!) that is not 
the case -- it builds with 4096 bytes per inode, and 8192 inodes per inode 
group.  Unless you know some more statistics about the filesystem and/or have 
the flags that the filesystem was initially created with, I can't tell you.  
However, if you're running recent RH or derivatives (KRUD, SuSE, Mandrake, 
etc) or most any other modern distro, you most likely had no choice in how 
the filesystems were created, so I can only guess.

>  It seems weird that installing some Windows software could cause all of
> this
>  damage.  I don't even know what an "illegal triply indirect block" is.

Make the next NCLUG meeting.  If we're available with lecture space there, 
I'll do a presentation on how filesystems work.  Otherwise, I'll post again 
shortly on it.  I learned this stuff in my Sun class last week, actually -- 
interesting material.

>  Any clue?

Another thing that just hit my mind:  did your operating kernel rev change to 
a pre-2.2 kernel?  There are some modes of the ext2 filesystem that won't 
work with those older kernels...  And I just realized it.  If you're running 
an ancient ass kernel for some reason, that might explain it.  Hmm.  Check 
your bootup messages and let us know.

Is there some time next weekend that we could meet somewhere (my place/office 
or yours) and I could take a gander at the system?   This actually poses an 
interesting problem, and I'd love to see it through.

--mec