Major system crash 2.2.14 HELP!!!

Major system crash 2.2.14 HELP!!!

[Alex Baretta]

I desperately need your help. I booted my machine 15 minutes ago,
pressed return at the LILO prompt to load the default kernel, waited
for the visual login screen to appear, I logged on to my account (not
root), started a terminal and ... and that's as much as I can tell
you. I left the computer for a few minutes to prepare my breakfast,
and when I sat down to my machine with my bowl of cereals in front of
me, I saw a most horrific vision: the LILO prompt once again. The
machine crashed so severely it rebooted directly without showing any
previous signs of agony. And what is worse, the machine now refuses to
start up. It tells me the superblock of some device does not pass file
system check (superblock is damaged). If offers me the possibility of
pressing Ctrl-D to resume the boot process or the possibility to type
my root password and start a shell. Ctrl-D results in the machine
observing that it can do nothing but force a reboot. The root password
takes me into a shell where I see the usual directories, but most of
them are empty. And what's even worse is that my data (home directory)
has been blown to interstellar dust.

I have frequently experienced system crashes on my machine. What would
happen exactly is that the machine would become totally unresponsive.
The mouse pointer would usually disappear, and no key combination
(Ctrl-Alt-Del, Ctrl-Alt-BS, Shit-Alt-Fn) would obtain any result, and
would very simply have to reboot the hard way. The frequence actually
appeared to be very random. Some days I would spend in the excess of
12 hours working at my computer and never rebooting. Other days I
remeber having had to reboot every few minutes. Originally I
attributed this phenomenon to an overheating of the drives [ I have 3
IDE drives which _used_to_ run merrily in my case... 8-(     ] Then  I
moved them to a one bay distance from one another, thereby greatly
reducing the temperature they reached, but this did not solve the
random system crashes.

Now my machine was completely cold after one night's rest. I boot up
correctly once, committed suicide, and all I have got is it's corpse.
What can I do? I could reinstall Linux, but first I have to try to get
my /home directory copied somewhere (to my other HD, for example, the
where I keep the Dark Side of the Force handy, for emergencies ... ).
How can I do this? What information can I _attempt_ to recover by
inspecting the cadaver (logs and the like that help a guru or two
figure out what happened?

Please, help me urgently. I am in such distress!

Alex

Re: Major system crash 2.2.14 HELP!!!

[Guennadi Liakhovetski]

Hi

Hm, ok, let me be the first to reply to you, although I am far not a good
specialist in this area, I just hope to provoke somebody to give more
professional answers to your problem:-)

1) Try using dd to copy your entire disk to another one (if that's
possible), it anyway would be a good starting point, I guess. Smth. like
(boot from a floppy, supposing your damaged drive is hda and you copy it
to hdb)
dd if=/dev/hda of=/dev/hdb
2) ok, now that we have (hopefully) preserved what was possible we can
attempt more risky steps: while booted from a floppy do
mount -r /dev/hda /mnt
and see what's left on your drive...
3) Now you can attempt various fsck's, but be warned - this is where you
already CAN make matters worse... First umount
umount /dev/hda
then smth like
e2fsck /dev/hda
...

Good luck
Guennadi

P.S. Hey, guys, I know it's a bit off-topic here, but some (all?) of you
can help this chap out better than me - please correct what I've said
wrong.

On Wed, 7 Mar 2001, Alex Baretta wrote:

> I desperately need your help. I booted my machine 15 minutes ago,
> pressed return at the LILO prompt to load the default kernel, waited
> for the visual login screen to appear, I logged on to my account (not
> root), started a terminal and ... and that's as much as I can tell
> you. I left the computer for a few minutes to prepare my breakfast,
> and when I sat down to my machine with my bowl of cereals in front of
> me, I saw a most horrific vision: the LILO prompt once again. The
> machine crashed so severely it rebooted directly without showing any
> previous signs of agony. And what is worse, the machine now refuses to
> start up. It tells me the superblock of some device does not pass file
> system check (superblock is damaged). If offers me the possibility of
> pressing Ctrl-D to resume the boot process or the possibility to type
> my root password and start a shell. Ctrl-D results in the machine
> observing that it can do nothing but force a reboot. The root password
> takes me into a shell where I see the usual directories, but most of
> them are empty. And what's even worse is that my data (home directory)
> has been blown to interstellar dust.
> 
> I have frequently experienced system crashes on my machine. What would
> happen exactly is that the machine would become totally unresponsive.
> The mouse pointer would usually disappear, and no key combination
> (Ctrl-Alt-Del, Ctrl-Alt-BS, Shit-Alt-Fn) would obtain any result, and
> would very simply have to reboot the hard way. The frequence actually
> appeared to be very random. Some days I would spend in the excess of
> 12 hours working at my computer and never rebooting. Other days I
> remeber having had to reboot every few minutes. Originally I
> attributed this phenomenon to an overheating of the drives [ I have 3
> IDE drives which _used_to_ run merrily in my case... 8-(     ] Then  I
> moved them to a one bay distance from one another, thereby greatly
> reducing the temperature they reached, but this did not solve the
> random system crashes.
> 
> Now my machine was completely cold after one night's rest. I boot up
> correctly once, committed suicide, and all I have got is it's corpse.
> What can I do? I could reinstall Linux, but first I have to try to get
> my /home directory copied somewhere (to my other HD, for example, the
> where I keep the Dark Side of the Force handy, for emergencies ... ).
> How can I do this? What information can I _attempt_ to recover by
> inspecting the cadaver (logs and the like that help a guru or two
> figure out what happened?
> 
> Please, help me urgently. I am in such distress!
> 
> Alex
> 
> -
> To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
> the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
> More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
> Please read the FAQ at  http://www.tux.org/lkml/
> 

___

Dr. Guennadi V. Liakhovetski
Department of Applied Mathematics
University of Sheffield, U.K.
email: G.Liakhovetski@sheffield.ac.uk

Re: Major system crash 2.2.14 HELP!!!

[Jonathan Brugge]

Ok...I'm not an expert on this, but maybe you can make something of this.

You can't see the contents of your homedir and some other directories 
anymore. You said "most" directories. I assume you can still access some. 
Does this mean you have them on separate partitions, mounted when booting? 
The fact that you have three HD's seems to suggest this. If so, just (try 
to) mount them: mount -t ext2 /dev/hdb1 /home or whatever HD your homedir 
was on. If mounting succeeds, make sure you can access the files in the dir 
you just mounted. In case that works, you know that it's 'only' the 
superblock on /dev/hda that's damaged. To try to repair it, use fdisk like 
Guennadi Liakhovetski suggested. If it's gone beyond repair, you can 
reinstall Linux on /dev/hda without removing the contents of your homedir 
(it's on another drive, duh). After the reinstall just mount it again and 
you should be fine.
If I'm totally wrong, please reply with a better answer...maybe not to the 
list, as it's slightly OT here.

Jonathan Brugge

>From: Guennadi Liakhovetski <g.liakhovetski@ragingbull.com>
>To: Alex Baretta <alex@baretta.com>
>CC: Linux Kernel Mailing List <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>
>Subject: Re: Major system crash 2.2.14 HELP!!!
>Date: Wed, 7 Mar 2001 10:33:50 +0000 (GMT)
>
>Hi
>
>Hm, ok, let me be the first to reply to you, although I am far not a good
>specialist in this area, I just hope to provoke somebody to give more
>professional answers to your problem:-)
>
>1) Try using dd to copy your entire disk to another one (if that's
>possible), it anyway would be a good starting point, I guess. Smth. like
>(boot from a floppy, supposing your damaged drive is hda and you copy it
>to hdb)
>dd if=/dev/hda of=/dev/hdb
>2) ok, now that we have (hopefully) preserved what was possible we can
>attempt more risky steps: while booted from a floppy do
>mount -r /dev/hda /mnt
>and see what's left on your drive...
>3) Now you can attempt various fsck's, but be warned - this is where you
>already CAN make matters worse... First umount
>umount /dev/hda
>then smth like
>e2fsck /dev/hda
>...
>
>Good luck
>Guennadi
>
>P.S. Hey, guys, I know it's a bit off-topic here, but some (all?) of you
>can help this chap out better than me - please correct what I've said
>wrong.
>
>On Wed, 7 Mar 2001, Alex Baretta wrote:
>
> > I desperately need your help. I booted my machine 15 minutes ago,
> > pressed return at the LILO prompt to load the default kernel, waited
> > for the visual login screen to appear, I logged on to my account (not
> > root), started a terminal and ... and that's as much as I can tell
> > you. I left the computer for a few minutes to prepare my breakfast,
> > and when I sat down to my machine with my bowl of cereals in front of
> > me, I saw a most horrific vision: the LILO prompt once again. The
> > machine crashed so severely it rebooted directly without showing any
> > previous signs of agony. And what is worse, the machine now refuses to
> > start up. It tells me the superblock of some device does not pass file
> > system check (superblock is damaged). If offers me the possibility of
> > pressing Ctrl-D to resume the boot process or the possibility to type
> > my root password and start a shell. Ctrl-D results in the machine
> > observing that it can do nothing but force a reboot. The root password
> > takes me into a shell where I see the usual directories, but most of
> > them are empty. And what's even worse is that my data (home directory)
> > has been blown to interstellar dust.
> >
> > I have frequently experienced system crashes on my machine. What would
> > happen exactly is that the machine would become totally unresponsive.
> > The mouse pointer would usually disappear, and no key combination
> > (Ctrl-Alt-Del, Ctrl-Alt-BS, Shit-Alt-Fn) would obtain any result, and
> > would very simply have to reboot the hard way. The frequence actually
> > appeared to be very random. Some days I would spend in the excess of
> > 12 hours working at my computer and never rebooting. Other days I
> > remeber having had to reboot every few minutes. Originally I
> > attributed this phenomenon to an overheating of the drives [ I have 3
> > IDE drives which _used_to_ run merrily in my case... 8-(     ] Then  I
> > moved them to a one bay distance from one another, thereby greatly
> > reducing the temperature they reached, but this did not solve the
> > random system crashes.
> >
> > Now my machine was completely cold after one night's rest. I boot up
> > correctly once, committed suicide, and all I have got is it's corpse.
> > What can I do? I could reinstall Linux, but first I have to try to get
> > my /home directory copied somewhere (to my other HD, for example, the
> > where I keep the Dark Side of the Force handy, for emergencies ... ).
> > How can I do this? What information can I _attempt_ to recover by
> > inspecting the cadaver (logs and the like that help a guru or two
> > figure out what happened?
> >
> > Please, help me urgently. I am in such distress!
> >
> > Alex
> >
> > -
> > To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" 
>in
> > the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
> > More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
> > Please read the FAQ at  http://www.tux.org/lkml/
> >
>
>___
>
>Dr. Guennadi V. Liakhovetski
>Department of Applied Mathematics
>University of Sheffield, U.K.
>email: G.Liakhovetski@sheffield.ac.uk
>
>
>-
>To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
>the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
>More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
>Please read the FAQ at  http://www.tux.org/lkml/
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