Inode that were part of a corrupted orphan linked list found

[dx...@albury.nospam.net.au]

On this HP 6730b Laptop, I multi-boot Win7/MD2009.1/MD2010.1/MD2012/MG2
and have my Home in a separate mount (SD8) so that all the linux's can
use it!

By default it boots into MD2009.1 but a couple of days ago, MD2009.1
died (which is why I'm posting this using Win7). Today I finally have
time to check things out. Sure enough, MD2009.1 wouldn't boot, so I
re-installed it, but it still would not boot, nor any of the Linux's.

This time, though, I actually looked at what the system was telling me!!
Lots of lines of no real interest, I hope, then.....

(from the screen)
Checking filesystem
/dev/sd8 contains a file system with errors check forced
(gets to approx 32%)
Inode that were part of a corrupted orphan linked list found.
/dev/sd8: UNEXPECTED INCONSISTENCIES; RUN fsck MANUALLY
(i.e. without -a and -p options)

I've tried booting to the MD2009.1 DVD, but I cannot see anything there
that will fix my Home mount. I've tried to run "fsck" but I expect I'm
not getting the correct syntact.

Can anyone give me a workable plan to help me re-claim my Home mount??
(Treat me gentle!!)

TIA

Daniel

[dx...@albury.nospam.net.au]

O.K., reading one of the threads in the a.o.l.mageia group has given me
the format of the fsck command, so I'll use my MD2009.1 DVD to get me to
a terminal, then I'll issue fsck /dev/sa8 and see if that fixes things!!

Daniel

[Jim Beard]

First, go into 2009.1's /etc and modify the line in fstab for
/dev/sda8 to put a 0 0 at the end. E.g.

/dev/sda8 /home ext4 defaults 0 0

That tells grub to ignore any problems with the partition when
booting. That might get you to a bootable configuration.

Next, (using a rescue CD or knoppix or whatever if your system
still will not boot) as root umount /dev/sda8 (note spelling of
umount).

Then, continuing as root, fsck -y /dev/sda8 or maybe fsck -p
/dev/sda8 even though the error message says not to use it. fsck
-a /dev/sda8 is also possible, but may be converted to fsck -p by
e2fsck anyway.

You may need to run the command multiple times, and if the
partition is large it can take a long time.

An alternative to the above is to format a new partition for
home, mount the bad partition, and copy over everything in the
bad partition to the new partition. That usually means you lose
everything affected by the corrupted inodes, but you have
probably lost that anyway. I trust you have backups and that
they are readable?

Thinking of backup, you can of course reformat /home and restore
from backup. Anything not backed up and readable is lost, of course.

Cheers!

jim b.

--
UNIX is not user unfriendly; it merely
expects users to be computer-friendly.

[unruh]

How do we know if you have the right syntax since you did not tell us
what you did or what happened.

>
> Can anyone give me a workable plan to help me re-claim my Home mount??
> (Treat me gentle!!)

No idea if it is workable, or what the problem is, but
Get a Mageia One disk and boot into it from the dvd.Then run
fsck /dev/sda8

2) Use the One disk to edit the /etc/fstab file on any of your
Mandriva/Mageia systems, and remove the mounting of /dev/sda8. Also edit
/etc/inittab and change the default boot level from 5 to 3. Now boot
into the that OS. Your home directory will not be mounted. Run fsck from
there.
It sounds to me like your disk could be dying. You did make a backup
didn't you in case that whole /etc/sda8 is gone ( and soon everything
will be gone). There is nothing that anyone can do to fix little pieces
of the disk surface flaking off and scratching the rest of the disk.



>
> TIA
>
> Daniel

[Whiskers]

On 2013-04-16, Dani...@teranews.com <dx...@albury.nospam.net.au> wrote:

> On this HP 6730b Laptop, I multi-boot Win7/MD2009.1/MD2010.1/MD2012/MG2
> and have my Home in a separate mount (SD8) so that all the linux's can
> use it!

[...]

If you've got the user configurations for all those distros
indiscriminately mixed up on that shared /home partition, there could be
all sorts of unpredictable effects. I think it would be better to have
each distro using its own /home directory, with a link to shared data in a
separate partition. You'll still have to take care with 'permissions' for
the shared stuff, and beware that files created or modified by one version
of an application may not be compatible with the older version in another
distro.

I wouldn't let Windows get any hint that the shared partition even exists;
Windows has never been good at sharing, and each new version seems to be
more xenophobic than the last.

--
-- ^^^^^^^^^^
-- Whiskers
-- ~~~~~~~~~~

[dx...@albury.nospam.net.au]

All better ... at least for now!

Was a bit worried when I got to a terminal and entered the "fsck
/dev/sa8" and nothing happened ... well, nothing good.

I looked around for other things to try, but, finding nothing, entered
fsck /dev/sa8 again and still nothing happened. Then I looked at what I
had entered and figured it might work better if I typed fsck /dev/sda8
(note the d) an away it went.

A couple of Block Bitmap Differences, a couple of incorrect Freeblock
Counts, all fixed and I'm away.

Just to check, I then entered fsck /dev/sda8 again, and it came through
without a problem.

Now, just in case the HD is dying, I'd better dd this drive to my spare,
as suggested by others.

Daniel

[Wolfgang Schelongowski]

"Dani...@teranews.com" <dx...@albury.nospam.net.au> writes:

[saving a 'broken' partition/disk]

>Now, just in case the HD is dying, I'd better dd this drive to my spare,
>as suggested by others.

You want to use dd_rescue instead of dd AND send all its
(error-)messages into a file. RTFM of dd_rescue first, of course.
--
The first entry of Sin into the mind occurs when, out of cowardice or
conformity or vanity, the Real is replaced by a comforting lie.
-- Integritas, Consonantia, Claritas

[Jim Beard]

On 04/18/2013 10:06 AM, Wolfgang Schelongowski wrote:
> "Dani...@teranews.com" <dx...@albury.nospam.net.au> writes:
>
> [saving a 'broken' partition/disk]
>
>> Now, just in case the HD is dying, I'd better dd this drive to my spare,
>> as suggested by others.
>
> You want to use dd_rescue instead of dd AND send all its
> (error-)messages into a file. RTFM of dd_rescue first, of course.
>

It seems there are three versions off dd*rescue offered by
Mandriva 2011. None is installed by default. The later version
of GNU ddrescue is likely the best choice.

[dx...@albury.nospam.net.au]

Wolfgang Schelongowski wrote:
> "Dani...@teranews.com" <dx...@albury.nospam.net.au> writes:
>
> [saving a 'broken' partition/disk]
>
>> Now, just in case the HD is dying, I'd better dd this drive to my spare,
>> as suggested by others.
>
> You want to use dd_rescue instead of dd AND send all its
> (error-)messages into a file. RTFM of dd_rescue first, of course.

Wolfgang, firstly, I have my Home (sda8) up and running again, so do I
really need dd_rescue?? I was just meaning to use the dd command to copy
my sda drive to a spare (sdb) drive, as a back-up.

I tried man dd_rescue but was told "No manual entry for dd_rescue".

Daniel

[Jim Beard]

As mentioned elsewhere, there seem to be three versions of dd
rescue, and whichever you use you will have to install it. It is
not installed by default, but is available in the Mandriva
repositories.

The problem with dd is that it chokes when it encounters bad
sectors. The dd rescue versions deal with such problems, with
what each will do in specific circumstances differing.

[dx...@albury.nospam.net.au]

O.K., Jim, thanks for that.

I thought that the dd command didn't care if the sector was occupied or
not, or good/bad/indifferent, it just copied the sector, whatever it was!

Daniel

[Jim Beard]

A sector that cannot be read cannot be copied. Literally. It
can be replaced with a sector of 0s, or it can be ignored, or a
stream of random bits can be provided in its place, but it cannot
be copied.

For this and certain other conditions, dd will fail, by design.

When the sector that cannot be read contains inodes (data on what
files exist where within the file system), there are a variety of
things that can be done to recover some of the information.
Search for information on the various versions, or read the
source code if you really want to know what these programs will do..

[Wolfgang Schelongowski]

Jim Beard <jdb...@patriot.net> writes:

>On 04/19/2013 09:11 AM, Dani...@teranews.com wrote:
>> Wolfgang Schelongowski wrote:
>>> "Dani...@teranews.com" <dx...@albury.nospam.net.au> writes:
>>>
>>> [saving a 'broken' partition/disk]

>>> You want to use dd_rescue instead of dd AND send all its
>>> (error-)messages into a file. RTFM of dd_rescue first, of course.
>>
>> Wolfgang, firstly, I have my Home (sda8) up and running again, so
>> do I really need dd_rescue?? I was just meaning to use the dd
>> command to copy my sda drive to a spare (sdb) drive, as a back-up.

When terminating, dd issues a message about how many blocks were
copied. How did your "dd </dev/sda" end? If *all* blocks you wanted to
be copied were copied to /dev/sdb you don't need dd_rescue, otherwise
you do.

...

>> I tried man dd_rescue but was told "No manual entry for dd_rescue".
>
>As mentioned elsewhere, there seem to be three versions of dd
>rescue, and whichever you use you will have to install it. It is
>not installed by default, but is available in the Mandriva
>repositories.
>
>The problem with dd is that it chokes when it encounters bad
>sectors.

Chokes? That's not strong enough - dd *dies* on encountering the first
bad sector.[1]

> The dd rescue versions deal with such problems, with
>what each will do in specific circumstances differing.

Oh dear. I suggest to create one dd_rescue to end all dd_rescues :-^)

>--
>UNIX is not user unfriendly; it merely
> expects users to be computer-friendly.

OTOH, I agree. OTOH I find Norman's "The Trouble with UNIX" in
Datamation 1980 valueable advice. If right people had listened
to it and acted accordingly, Microsoft would have been a practically
unknown company by (say) 1994. OTGH - say la vee!


[1] Since "dies" is a four letter word, it should be strong enough.

[Jim Beard]

On 04/20/2013 07:56 PM, Wolfgang Schelongowski wrote:

>> UNIX is not user unfriendly; it merely
>> expects users to be computer-friendly.
>
> OTOH, I agree. OTOH I find Norman's "The Trouble with UNIX" in
> Datamation 1980 valueable advice. If right people had listened
> to it and acted accordingly, Microsoft would have been a practically
> unknown company by (say) 1994. OTGH - say la vee!

A quick Google search shows that Norman 30 years later has not
yet allowed free distribution of his original article. That
suggests he does not want examination and analysis of his
thoughts of yesteryear by those with a more recent (or more
knowledgeable) perspective.

I commend to you the anti-foreward by Ritchie in The Unix Hater's
Manual, another work Norman contributed to and that is readily
available (however worthless it may be for anything other than
entertainment for those with a morbid sense of humor).

Reasons for the Microsoft success were many, an unlikely
combination of pure blind luck, fundamental misjudgment by IBM
executives in a few crucial instances, excellent skills in things
computer of Bill Gates (yes, he was brilliant; sad that
brilliance was not put to what I think would have been its best
use -- improving and poularizing UNIX) surpassed in commercial
value by his choice of strategy and tactics in the marketplace,
Job's fixation on a premium price for a premium product (that may
yet prove more durable in the long run, though it very nearly led
to Apple's demise in the past), a "competitive mindset" within
AT&T more suited to a telecommunications monopoly where everyone
in the business worldwide has to cooperate in a gentlemanly
manner than to a high-growth upstart industry featuring
cut-throat competition for a market exploding in size and molting
its technology every 4 years, and probably other things as well.

That said, I do have fond memories of Seventh Edition UNIX on a
PDP 11/70 (and unpleasant memories of attempting to do simple
things on an IBM 370) and of System V Release 4 with X-Windows
and Mosaic. Those are not coming back, and I would not trade
what I am using today (hardware and software) for what I used
back then, but there were superb features and approaches of "the
old days" that have been lost in the dust. Sad.

Cheers!

jim b.