seeking JFS recovery wisdom

[David Abrahams]

OK, so my ubuntu laptop locked up after a resume recently with no recent 
backup <insert requisite self-flagellation> :(

After the first reboot, I was getting all kinds of funky problems with 
gnome, so I did a "sudo touch /forcefsck" and tried to reboot without 
success.  The fsck failed to completely recover everything on my JFS 
root partition and I lost my /etc directory.  lost+found has many 
recognizable files from /etc, but it seems as though  putting them all 
back where they belong is probably a huge amount of work.

Seems like my /home filesystem is still in decent shape.

After I back up what I have and choose a more reliable backup strategy, 
I can see a few options for getting back to a "known good configuration"

1. try to put the lost+found files back and hope for the best
2. reinstall ubuntu and use my old /home partition.  Attempt to restore 
installed software and configurations to the previous state
3. anything else?

Also, did I do the wrong thing by trying to force a fsck?  If so, what 
should I have done instead?

Finally, is there any reason to believe that some other filesysytem 
would have been less likely to fail in this way?

Thanks in advance,
Dave