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]
