A Question of Time 0

What might have caused this?

Hint: The answer involves two computers. (Answer below the fold.)

The partition that threw the error is on an external USB drive (that’s /dev/sdb1 or “device SATA drive b partition 1” in the screenshot) which is configured to automount upon boot, because its job in life is to serve as an extra hard drive for one computer. It seldom travels.

Seconds before, that drive had been connected to my old Dell 4700–the machine I’m retiring–so I could copy some files needed on my new box; the computer clock on the old computer is about three minutes fast. I booted to the new computer with the drive connected before the three minutes had elapsed, so the drive had to travel back in time in order to be on the same wavelength as it.

Strangest error message I’ve yet seen, and I’ve seen some strange ones (my favorite is still “Error getting error about error” from the old Threshold Enterprise access control program).