Can't find ext3 file system on dev ide0(3,69)

[Guest gsagrati]

Hi everybody,

 

I've been thinking about switching to Linux for a long time. Finally I decided to do that but unfortunately it isn't working out as I expected. I downloaded the ISO images, burned them and installed Mandrake 9.0 on my second HD. The installation was smooth but the system is unable to boot. I get a bunch of "LDM: cannot find VBLK, database may be corrupt." followed by a "VFS: Can't find ext3 file system on dev ide0(3,69)"

 

My system is configured as follow:

AMD 700Mhz (I know, I know, it is time to upgrade it!)

IDE HD1 20 GB (Win2000 Server)

IDE HD2 60 GB with

NTFS partition (30 GB)

/ partition (1 GB)

swap partition (500MB)

/usr partition (5 GB)

/home partition (23 GB) (or is it called root? )

 

Any help is more than appreciated.

Joe

[fuzzylizard]

My first suggestion would be to move the windows ntfs partition entirely onto one of the hard drives. This would reduce it to 20 gigs.

 

Then install Mandrake onto the entire second partition.

 

Part of the problem may be the fact that you have windows spanning two drives.

 

Second, try reinstalling Mandrake and see what happens. Can you boot successfully into windows still?

[Guest fhj52]

Jeez, I sure do miss San Diego. The weather, the girls, the beaches, the women... If GD had not sold out and my Mom had not gotten sick, I'd still be there. I think I could still live in Pt. Loma - even with the roar of the planes(Which I understand is soon to change; well, within a few years.).

***

VFS: Can't find ext3 file system on dev ide0(3,69)"

Most often when such error happens here it means that there is no ext filesystem on that disk. It is not a spurious error in other words; just not extremely friendly to the point of saying " Are you sure that the device designation is correct?"

The problem is that Mandrake's install always gets that correct for linux, so we have to assume that there is something else wrong. You should check it anyway. "ide0" is the first disk and ide1 would be the second disk(physical). It looks like you have WIn2k Svr on ide0 but it is hard to tell from what you wrote.

I cannot give you a fix as, among other things, you did not state what bootloader you are using. After reading thru your post a second time, I realized you probably don't know what that is. :)

 

There are a couple of other possibilities, including that your disk is corrupted. I recently had that happen to me.

 

So, we'll need more info. Does

system is unable to boot

mean your system is down or did you mean "Linux" is unable to boot?

 

If your system is down, go into your BIOS settings and change the disk that the BIOS designates as the first choice to use as the boot device to the disk that you have Windoz installed upon. NTLDR should pop-up and you can get into windows.(i hope)

 

AMD 700Mhz (I know, I know, it is time to upgrade it!)

AMD 700 can do what you need for years to come. Unless you just want to upgrade, don't bother. There really is very little software out there that needs more than a 233MHz PII. In Linux you can probably adjust that all the way down to the Pentium; many(most?) don't require more than a 486DX.

 

/home partition (23 GB)(or is it called root?  )

/home _is_ " home ".

All the users reside in /home as /home/$USER. You may see your home designated as /~ meaning /home/<YourUserName> after we get you up and running.

 

root is several things. First and foremost root is GOD on your system - can do all or destroy all in the blink of an eye. BE EXTREMELY CAREFUL WHEN WORKING AS root. Linux presumes that root knows what it is doing and wil NOT stop it/you! Mandrake works a few, very few, protections into BASH but it is not like MSwindows at all. You can delete ALL the data on your system with a simple cough at the wrong time. No kidding.

root is also used as the "root" partition, / . All things originate from root; the file system(fs) structure is different in Linux than in windows - better in many ways, imo.

root is also sometimes used as /root which is root's 'home', accessible only to root. Most often people will refer to it as 'root's home' and not as 'root'.

Usually when people talk about root they are referring to the "superuser" named "root" and you can generally assume that is the case.

***

 

Let's ask a question or two.

 

Did you also see "kernel panic" on the boot screen when it stopped?

 

Are you willing to start over with a new install?

Meaning

• NTFS (30 GB)

/ (1 GB)

swap (500MB)

/usr (5 GB)

/home (20gb)

is ok but not really optimum(nice way to put it).

Here's why.

NTFS should only be read by Linux; write support is not nearly at the level to trust it. ( In fact, I do not fully trust read - do it only as necessary) 30GB is a whopping big space! Must you have all of that for Win2k Server data? If so, can you move the data to another location, temporarily, so that you can install Linux on the front end of the drive?

/ : 1 GB is twice what you have to have but it is ok. Until this last version (9), i never had more than 250MB and it was only about 75% utilized(~3 years). I bumped it up to ~500MB, primarily because so many vendors are now using /opt as the directory of choice. the space on / gets used according to the other directories(files) that are attached to it. Everything in Linux fs is a 'file'. Normally, / does not have any regular files in it - it is all files' directories. Mandrake sticks a couple of regular files in there but you should not.

 

swap of 500MB is pretty big unless your RAM is very small(less than 64MB-128MB). Also swap is best if it is on 2 or more seperate (physical) disks; the same is true for windoz, BTW. Linux is MUCH better at utilizing RAM than windoz. The old rule of thumb(RoT) about having double your RAm for a swap space is no longer true. Those were the days where 64MB was only found on (huge and expensive) servers. If you really need that much swap spce, split it up between the two physical drives.

 

/usr :5GB is a little big too. I had a 2GB /usr, then bumped it to 4GB and installed the kitchen sink with M'8.2. It was too big so now it's at 3.5GB. I think that might be too big.:) Please note that I build RPMS and needed extra space for /usr/src/RPM. You won't need that for a while.

 

/home :23GB; You must have(guess) at least 15 or more users. The gist being each user should not need more than ~ a GB but if your the generous admin, you can give them more room to play - as much as you want. However, the problem is that when it comes time to check the disk partition, you are going to want to cut user space to a minimum and you will not be able to do it. Users get very upset when you cut their space but luv you when you give them more.:)

 

/boot :non-existent; for your protection - always put on your boot:)

/tmp :non-existent; so where do the temprary files get put?

/var :non-existent; you are going to want that when running apache or some other servers.

 

In general, compartmentalize your system into many partitions. Make them as small as they can be. Linux does not require GB's of space like windows does.

Also, install as few programs as possible. Since you are a neophyte to Linux, I imagine that you are going to want the kitchen sink. That's okay but if your goal is replacing Win2k server(a guess), every program you add should be considered a security risk.

And last, but not least, if you are going to run any external servers, do NOT connect to the internet before installing and configuring (suggestions) tripwire, SNORT and a damn good firewall! Your bOx can be oWnd in less than fifteen minutes! It's been done, being done now and will be done again.

 

If all of that is gibberish to you, _and_ if you can boot into Win2k Svr, I suggest that you reinstall a very minimal MandrakeLinux with ALL the documentation you can find, do NOT run any external servers(esp. BIND or (x)inetd), build a good firewall and read/study like a madman!

The reason being that you are going to need to 'play' with the system and more likely than not, you(root) are going to break it so bad that you cannot fix it. You should fix it - it usually is fixable, but the truth is that a reinstall will be faster if you started with a very minimal system. It's your pain, man; you have to decide how much you should take.

 

All in all, this will be good learning experience for you. You'll be better looking, sexier and one H! of a lot better admin than you were before. :)

Well, idunno about the two former, but the latter is certain.

[Guest gsagrati]

Geeee, I thought I was so good passing information and instead...

Let me try to be a little more specific:

I can still boot into Windows 2000 Server without any problem. It is Linux that doesn't want to boot.

 

"ide0" is the first disk and ide1 would be the second disk(physical)

 

Correct me if I'm wrong but both disk1 (master) and disk2 (slave) are connected to ide0. The CDROM and the CD burner are connected to ide1.

 

you did not state what bootloader you are using

 

I'm using LILO which is the standard for Mandrake 9 (right?).

 

Did you also see "kernel panic" on the boot screen when it stopped?

 

Yes I did. Sorry if I didn't mention it. I assumed that if the system couldn't mount the file system it would panic (as I did) :D

 

Are you willing to start over with a new install?

 

I have no problem starting over with a new install and I will follow your suggestions on which partitions to create. What is bugging me is that I have this 60 GB HD and you're telling me that it is "too big" for Linux. :wink:

The only reason for the NTFS partition on HD2 is because I thought that I didn't need so much space for Linux and I thought I could use some of the space for Windows (my daughter started downloading music videos...).

 

Anyway. Thank you for your prompt reply.

If you have more suggestions please let me know. I'm eager to see Linux coming up and start 'palying' with it.

[Guest fhj52]

it is "too big" for Linux

 

I have a 'less is more' view - just means that the core part is really small compared to windows. Music videos, MP3, games and etc... all take a lot of room regardless of the OS. You should have plenty of room for a LOT of them. But, again, you should not *write* to NTFS from Linux.

I was guessing about how you have your sys set up. Guess I guessed wrong.

I asked about the kernel panic 'cause I did not know exactly what was not booting. The kernel will have a panic if it cannot load the root fs where the boot scripts are located (among other reasons).

 

You'll need a running linux to fix the problem *if* it can be fixed.

You can boot from the cd1.

After booting, before the install starts, Press F1 and type ' rescue '. That'll load a minimal linux for you to mount the fs and find out what is going on. type in the root password to get access.

Since both of your drives are ide they s/b designated hda and hdb. You can try (the easy way) to mount all with

mount -a

If that returns an error you might have to load ech partiton individually wih the mount command. Somethin like:

mount <some_device> <some_location>

You can get the info by viewing /etc/fstab using less (or more).

If fstab has incorrect device designations you should find out immediately.

If the partitions don't mount you will need to fix ' fstab '. If they all mount you'll still need to look at ' lilo.conf ' to see if you need to fix it(probably). Then you will need to run ' lilo ' to update it with the changes. The lilo command will return errors if it does not like what you did. You will have to fix those errors and run lilo again. Repeat A/R.

 

If you have not read the man page for lilo.conf, you can access it here:

http://nodevice.com/sections/ManIndex/man0709.html.

Other man pages are available online too.

 

Obviously you need to know some *nix console commands. Do you?

DOS commands are functionally similar but mostly unusable in *nix.

fdisk is the same command name and you can take a look at your partitions with it.

 

The error message you put up did not look like just a fs mounting problem. It looks more like the MBR is wrong, the filesystem or the partition may be corrupted . LiLo may not be able to fix that - idunno. It may not be 'fixable' - one of those issues where reinstalling might be faster.

***startRant***

LiLo. I cannot count the number of times it has caused misery. I don't use it. I used it for a while a couple of years ago and thought it might be _the_ way to boot. But after hours with it compared to a couple of minutes with GRUB, I trashed LiLo and have not looked back.

*GRUB just works* to load the options for booting and boots wherever I point it. They say it is not as purty as LiLO, but I have to wonder why people need pretty to *clear my throat* load an OS. Personally, I just want it to get started. I hate rebooting but am caught in the windows web for now so I would like to get it over with as soon as possible. GRUB is like NTLDR with color.

***endRant***

 

IOW, I may not be able to help you very much more with LiLo. The man pages have the info you need.

 

If you choose to reinstall, check out the LDP and look for documents on proper setup of the partitions - or just use what I suggested. They are about the same; my sizes are different based on experience here. If you do not need 'purty', choose GRUB as the bootloaer. It will save time/pain in the future.

/boot does not need to be more than ~25 MB unless you plan on building/hacking kernels. Even then 40MB is plenty. After yo are settled in, you can make it RO( and even not mount it in fstab).

/var can be 500MB if you are planning on Apache or will do a lot of cgi.

/tmp of 100 or 200MB is plenty. You could probably get by with 50MB!

assumning you have at least 256MB of RAM:

swap on hda of 1/4 your RAM size;

swap on hdb of 1/4 your RAM size;

e.g., if RAM=256MB, swap space=128MB total =>64MB on each physical drive. That provides plenty of swap space unless you are running a movie and/or sound studio. Less swap is needed as RAM gets > than 256MB but you should probably keep ~128MB as the minimum. It depends entirely on the applications you will run. You can add more later if you need it. You certainly have enough drive space.:)

 

others:

/games ?idunno? -maybe FAT32

/vid and /mp3 ?idunno? -maybe FAT32

/config-files maybe 1/2 Gig to store all the config files(symlink them back to the original storage location). That allieviates much configuration pain for future installs/upgrades. Most of those will be root configs because /root usually gets formatted during an upgrade. It is also a really good place to keep the icons, wallpaper, sounds and other items for configuring the system as you find them. I found out that icons, etc... sometimes disappear from version to version so you are left without consistency. If you do not have the configs backed-up somewhere, well, you really will start fresh.

/downloads ~3GB - someplace to store the ISO's and contrib files that you will be getting

/data

/whatever ...

The idea here is that you do not need to mount everything during boot and booting will be faster - much faster, especially when the partitions get fsck'd. Mount the core partitions during boot and mount others as needed. /config-files will become a 'core' if you use that method.

It is also safer. It is very hard to damage that which is not mounted.

 

All totaled you will have used less than 20GB and will have plenty of space for more vids, music or whatever y'all want.

 

Good Luck