[CoLoCo] Urgent Help Needed: File system screw-up

[Kevin Fries]

On Wed, 2007-08-22 at 09:16 -0600, Neal McBurnett wrote:
> I'll just chime in with one more thing that won't help now, but may
> provide the right sort of motivatation to do the work that has to be
> done before the next time....

I really feel for the OP.  I once had a boss that decided that / was
getting too full, so he tried to move /usr to a new partition.  After
moving copying all the files into the nearest black hole, he
deleted /usr, and rebooted.  It was an ugly sight :-)

But the OP brings up two very important issues: First, never mess with
your drive unless the data is expendable or backed up.  Second, NEVER
MESS WITH YOUR DRIVE UNLESS THE DATA IS EXPENDABLE OR BACKED UP!!!

My advice to fix:
   * Do not trust that partition any longer

   * If the partition is mounted, umount it, and remove any entry in
     /etc/fstab

   * Run down to Office Depot and get yourself a Western Digital
     MyBook.

   * use dd to bit-copy that partition into a file on the external hard
     drive (# mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/rescue
            # dd if=/dev/hda12 of=/mnt/rescue/backup.img)

   * mount the copy via loopback and copy anything you want to try and
     keep (# mount -o loop,ro /mnt/rescue/backup.img /mnt/rescue2
           # <copy commands to rescue data>
           # umount /mnt/rescue2)

   * kill the untrustworthy partition (# mkfs.ext3 /dev/hda12)

   * never do this again, lol (easy to say since "I've NEVER done
     anything like that", he says tongue firmly in cheek :-D )

Good luck

-- 
Kevin Fries
Senior Linux Engineer
Computer and Communications Technologies, Inc.
a division of Japan Communications, Inc.
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