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Kernel panic cause by hard drive - major problem


jethro
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Additional note: As I don't know where the new partition came from originally, it is a bit trial and error correcting the fstab entries again. If sda5 ain't correct and sda6 ain't correct, either, try some other numberings. If you are lucky, you can get it up and running again. If you are unlucky, you might need to reinstall the base system. But that really ain't a reason to panic. As /home is stored on a separate partition, it will remain intact, and all data on it should be okay and available once you reinstall as it is only the base system that got a hickup. :)

 

For now, follow Ians suggestion.

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Thank you for your reply! I live in the Netherlands, so that is also GMT+1.

 

Giving you guys my IP is fine as a last resort, but before that perhaps we can try some other things. Arctic said I could try to change the sda6 line in my fstab to sda5. I tried this but it gave the same result. If some of you are able to help I would be really greatful. Not panicking is quite hard, but I think I can manage.

 

At this point I am going to try to backup my home directory using an USB hard drive and Knoppix.

 

What are the steps I can take after that to try to fix this problem?

 

Jethro

 

PS. deleting the created drive which caused the error using qtparted would nog solve the problem?

The more you alter in terms of partitions now the less likely you are to save your work.

 

You can get a big usb key for €20-50 (if you don't have one) which would hold lots of documents (or you can ask friends etc.) but if I were in your situation I would stop everything, boot up in knoppix and copy all your important files to somewhere safe.

 

Under knoppix everything wil be mounted read-only by default....

I would concentrate on saving all your work before trying to fix the fstab.... and keep away from playing with the partitions at all until this is done. (We are talking about your thesis afterall) and there are even partition recovery tools available....

 

Im speaking from experience unfortunately, I lost a drive once in a Mandriva install (I just left a USB key in and it borked the partitioning) and I never fully recovered the data on that drive...

 

With hindsight I should have started off by lower level utilities like copying the files using a liveCD... although back then liveCD's were not common..

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Alright, here is where I stand so far:

- I managed to copy my entire home directory to another PC in my network using Knoppix

 

- I tried booting the Mandrive 2006 install DVD, but that does not work, because it hangs when trying to initialize my PCMCIA cards (although I do not have any). This is a familiar problem with my laptop, actually my Mandriva installation is done with the Mandriva One Beta Livce CD, because that was the only way of getting Mandriva to install.

I booted with the Mandriva One Beta Live CD again, pressed "F1" for "More options" and entered: "live rescue". After that I entered a normal graphical environment. I opened a konsole and typed the things Ian said and then I looked at the /etc/fstab. I said exactly the same as I posted earlier. I comes done to this:

# This file is edited by fstab-sync - see 'man fstab-sync' for details
/dev/sda6 / ext3 defaults 1 1
/dev/sda8 /home ext3 defaults 1 2
/dev/hdc /mnt/cdrom auto 
none /proc proc defaults 0 0
/dev/sda1 /windows ntfs umask=0,defaults 0 0
/dev/sda7 swap swap defaults 0 0

Would it help you guys to have a screenshot of wat qtparted or MCC shows?

Edited by jethro
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I've just had an idea, I think your LILO config is still looking at /dev/sda5. Can you boot into linux rescue, or live rescue again, and mount as I showed you before and then do this:

 

more /etc/lilo.conf

 

do you see references to /dev/sda5? If you do, we need to change these to /dev/sda6. You can do this with vim. So:

 

vi /etc/lilo.conf
press "i" to get insert mode
use arrow keys to find sda5 and change to sda6
do this in all places
press "esc"
press ":wq" to write and quit
/sbin/lilo

 

and that should do it for you.

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AHA! This screenie helps a lot. As it shows, the harddrive partition sda5 is not partitioned. It needs to be partitioned (e.g. as ext3 or ReiserFS), otherwise, Mandriva will try to determine the filesystem-type and bomb out as it can't find any reference! If the partition would be at the end of the drive, it would not be so dramatic, but having nearly 8 GB of unformatted, unallocated space n the middle of a drive is shouting for trouble. Format the partition with Knoppix in e.g. ext3 mode, now that your /home is backed up.

 

And yes, check the bootloader entries. (why did we forget about that? :wall:)

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Alright, it looks like we are getting somewhere. Let's start with lilo.conf, this is how it looks like:

root@0[etc]# cat ./lilo.conf
# File generated by DrakX/drakboot
# WARNING: do not forget to run lilo after modifying this file

default="2.6.12-21mdk-i586-up-1GB"
boot=/dev/sda
map=/boot/map
menu-scheme=wb:bw:wb:bw
prompt
nowarn
timeout=100
message=/boot/message
image=/boot/vmlinuz
	label="2.6.12-17mdk-i586-up-1GB"
	root=/dev/sda7
	initrd=/boot/initrd.img
	append="ec_burst=1 splash=silent"
	vga=788
image=/boot/vmlinuz
	label="linux-nonfb"
	root=/dev/sda7
	initrd=/boot/initrd.img
	append="splash=silent"
image=/boot/vmlinuz
	label="failsafe"
	root=/dev/sda7
	initrd=/boot/initrd.img
	append="failsafe"
other=/dev/sda1
	label="windows"
	table=/dev/sda
image=/boot/vmlinuz-i586-up-1GB
	label="2.6.12-18mdk-i586-up-1GB"
	root=/dev/sda7
	initrd=/boot/initrd-i586-up-1GB.img
	append="ec_burst=1 splash=silent"
	vga=788
image=/boot/vmlinuz-i586-up-1GB
	label="linux-i586-up-1GB"
	root=/dev/sda7
	initrd=/boot/initrd-i586-up-1GB.img
	append="ec_burst=1 splash=silent"
	vga=788
image=/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.12-21mdk-i586-up-1GB
	label="2.6.12-21mdk-i586-up-1GB"
	root=/dev/sda7
	initrd=/boot/initrd-2.6.12-21mdk-i586-up-1GB.img
	append="ec_burst=1 splash=silent"
	vga=788

 

As you can see it is looking at sda7, that appears to be my linux-swap. Should I change sda7 to sda6?

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I executed your steps, this is what "/sbin/lilo" returned:

[root@dhcppc2 /]# /sbin/lilo
Warning: '/proc/partitions' does not exist, disk scan bypassed
Added 2.6.12-17mdk-i586-up-1GB
Added linux-nonfb
Added failsafe
Added windows
Added 2.6.12-18mdk-i586-up-1GB
Added linux-i586-up-1GB
Added 2.6.12-21mdk-i586-up-1GB *

 

I am now going to reboot out of the Mandriva One Beta Live CD into my normal Mandriva installation, I am curious if it works...

Edited by jethro
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Thank you guys so much, the lilo.conf change worked out!

 

The only thing that needs to be done now it adding half of the /sda5 to my /sda6 en the other half to my /sda8. How can I go about doing this?

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This is possible, and can be done, as I've done it recently on one of my systems.

 

Providing that the data on /dev/sda6 doesn't exceed the space on /dev/sda5, you can do it by moving the data, deleting /dev/sda6 and then resizing the partition.

 

I've not done it with ext3 as I use reiserfs as my filesystem types, but I'll take a look shortly to provide you with the steps to do it. It just requires booting in rescue mode to do most of it, and the commands are relatively straightforward. I'm just unsure of the ext3 resize at the moment.

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Glad that it is up and running again. Actually, this thread also shows why I prefer grub over lilo. If grub crashes, I can edit the files from the command line easily without any need of a live-CD and such stuff. And you can check the temporary changes you want to make before editing the bootloader config permanently. :)

 

Maybe it is best to start a new thread on the partition splitting question. ;)

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