secondary damage

When a fatal error occurs (especially 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 grovelling 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]