[PLUG] Superblock problem -- Somewhat resolved

[William A Morita]

Being puzzled with my results from e2fsck I began poking around in the
"recovery" shell that I was repeatedly forced into at boot.
First discovery, /etc/fstab had been blasted -- I recovered from a fstab~
file.
This still did not solve the boot problem.
On a lark I attempted to run emacs ... It RAN!.
I then did a "mount -a" and everything mounted except /boot.
I then tried "init 3" and finally "init 5".
The system came up all the way!
I am still not clear on what is broken, but I will begin backing up things
immediately.  
I wish Centos 5 or Scientific Linux 5 was already out ... I would convert
now.
I think I can limp along until then.

- Bill Morita 

wamorita at hevanet.com 
Home: (503) 697-6994
Cell: (503) 260-3876


-----Original Message-----
From: William A Morita [mailto:wamorita at hevanet.com] 

Carlos 

If what you say is true, then instead of rebuilding the kernel, I should be
able to boot an earlier working version of the kernel.
I have tried booting with the two preceding kernel versions.
I get the same result.

I am getting puzzling results from e2fsck:
    root at Knoppix:~# e2fsck -p -b 32768 /dev/hda2
    /: Truncating orphaned inode 18230 (uid=99, gid=99, mode=0100544,
size=52)
    / was not cleanly unmounted, check forced.
    /: 349842/2692800 files (2.6% non-contiguous), 3621197/5382720 blocks
    root at Knoppix:~# e2fsck -p -b 32768 /dev/hda2
    /: Truncating orphaned inode 18230 (uid=99, gid=99, mode=0100544,
size=52)
    / was not cleanly unmounted, check forced.
    /: 349842/2692800 files (2.6% non-contiguous), 3621197/5382720 blocks
    root at Knoppix:~# e2fsck  /dev/hda2
    e2fsck 1.40-WIP (14-Nov-2006)
    /: clean, 349842/2692800 files, 3621197/5382720 blocks (check in 5
mounts)
    root at Knoppix:~# e2fsck -f /dev/hda2
    e2fsck 1.40-WIP (14-Nov-2006)
    Pass 1: Checking inodes, blocks, and sizes
    Pass 2: Checking directory structure
    Pass 3: Checking directory connectivity
    Pass 4: Checking reference counts
    Pass 5: Checking group summary information
    /: 349842/2692800 files (2.6% non-contiguous), 3621197/5382720 blocks
    root at Knoppix:~#

Notice that the first run of e2fsck does not seem to clear the truncated
inode and Unclean mount conditions.
Yet, running without the -b option seems to find the partition "clean".
I get the same results under both Knoppix and in the single user mode the
boot error forces me into.

Any thoughts?

Thanks in advance.

- Bill Morita 

-----Original Message-----
From: plug-bounces at lists.pdxlinux.org
[mailto:plug-bounces at lists.pdxlinux.org] On Behalf Of Carlos Konstanski
Sent: Wednesday, May 02, 2007 7:00 AM
To: wamorita at hevanet.com; General Linux/UNIX discussion and help;civil and
on-topic
Subject: Re: [PLUG] HELP -- Superblock problem

On Wed, 2 May 2007, William A Morita wrote:

> Date: Wed, 2 May 2007 06:42:59 -0700
> From: William A Morita <wamorita at hevanet.com>
> To: "'General Linux/UNIX discussion and help;	civil and on-topic'"
>     <plug at lists.pdxlinux.org>
> Subject: [PLUG] HELP -- Superblock problem
> 
> I need help with a SuperBlock problem.
> My White Box Linux system won't boot because it indicates a problem 
> with the SuperBlock on my root partition.
> It suggests running e2fsck b=xxx on the partition containing my root (/).
> I have successfully run e2fsck using b=32768, but it still refuses to 
> mount / during boot.
> I have run mke2fs -S on the partition, followed by a e2fsck.
> Still no joy. Same error message
> I have booted Knoppix and can mount the partition without a problem.
>
> Suggestions on where to go from here?
>
> Thanks in advance.
>
>
> - Bill Morita
>
> wamorita at hevanet.com
> Home: (503) 697-6994
> Cell: (503) 260-3876

As crazy as it might sound, you may want to make sure your White Box is
loading the appropriate kernel module(s) to enable disk access (namely, the
ext3 module, plus any lower-level disk access drivers like libata).  I'll
bet that knoppix is loading the necessary drivers, and an lsmod will reveal
all.

Once booted under knoppix, you could chroot to your root filesystem and
build a new, custom kernel that has all the necessary drivers compiled into
the kernel image, avoiding the module issue altogether.
It's nice to avoid having to troubleshoot initrd images.

Carlos Konstanski
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