got a message from root:
@localhost ~]$
Message from syslogd@localhost at Mon Feb 7 07:53:37 2011 ...
localhost klogd: journal commit I/O error
i recall that i was attempting to port data from a dying drive, which eventually dropped out leaving an incomplete copy. could this be the event referred to above?
It means that the drive got enough errors that the OS took it to read-only mode.