secondary damage
:secondary damage: n. When a fatal error occurs (esp. a segfault
the
immediate cause may be that a pointer has been trashed due to a previous
fandango on core
However, this fandango may have been due to an
_earlier_ fandango, so no amount of analysis will reveal (directly) how
the damage occurred. "The data structure was clobbered, but it was
secondary damage."
By extension, the corruption resulting from N cascaded fandangoes on
core is `Nth-level damage'. There is at least one case on record in
which 17 hours of grovel
ing with `adb' actually dug up the underlying
bug behind an instance of seventh-level damage! The hacker who
accomplished this near-superhuman feat was presented with an award by
his fellows.
Jargon File Version 4.3.1, 29 JUN 2001 =
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