[PLUG] Need Help - DISK CRASH ???

[Kevin Cosgrove]

        I got suggestions to check the SCSI cables and verify
        that the drives are working.  I reseated all the SCSI
        connectors -- none felt loose -- and the SCSI terminator.
        The internal end-of-cable terminator definitely felt
        loose.  Then I powered up the box and after some fsck'ing
        I'm back in business.

        On the fsck'ing topic, if anyone has ever had to answer
        "yes" to its "blow away your file now?" prompts, then
        you might be as happy as I am to run Kirk Bauer's
        "check-packages" program.  It found the two packages
        who's files got toasted and I reinstalled them from the
        distro RPMS.  I've got tripwire checking to see what
        might have changed that isn't part of a package.

	Thanks for the loose cable suggestions!

On 17 July 2002 at 15:03, Kevin Cosgrove <kevinc at mdhost.cse.tek.com> wrote:


I woke this morning to a dead system.  I can't tell at the moment
whether or not this is a hard disk crash or a hard disk data
problem that reformatting or repartitioning might solve.  The
system was totally locked, and even the alt-sysrq-s wouldn't sync
the disks.  So, I power cycled the poor machine.  At the next
reboot I got:

    kernel panic: VFS: unable to mount root fs on 08:06

At a subsequent reboot I got:

    scsi: aborting command due to timeout: pid 0, scsi 0, channel
    0, id 1, lun 0 read(10) 00 00 5d 65 7c 00 00 08 00
    scsi0: aborting CCB #54 to target 1
    scsi0: CCB #54 to target 1 aborted

I did a Google Linux advanced search for the kernel panic
message.  95% of the Google matches were for people building new
kernels and/or screwing up their LILO configuration.  5% of the
messages mentioned that the boot record on the partition was
screwed up.  I the the latter is more likely for me, since I
haven't changed my kernel or lilo since Mandrake released their
security patched 2.4.8 kernel, i.e. many months ago.

So, I think what I need to do is pop in my Mandrake boot floppy,
press F1 at the boot screen, and enter "rescue" at the boot
prompt.  From there I'd like to do as little as possible to get
my system working.  In other words, if I can get away with just
rerunning lilo, rather than reinstalling, I would prefer that.

Anyone got suggestions?

Thanks....