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]
Nearby terms:
SECC « SECD machine « secondary cache « secondary
damage
» secondary key » secondary storage » second
generation computer
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