[Hoary] Can't Read EXT3 Journal

[David M. Carney]

On 4/24/05, Scott Henson <scotth at csee.wvu.edu> wrote:
> On Sun, 2005-04-24 at 21:56 -0400, David M. Carney wrote:
> > So much for recoverable file systems.
> >
> > I had a hard lockup. Not sure what caused it. I was scrolling through
> > my mail in Evolution and it locked up tight.
> >
> 
> The reason sounds like your drive going south.
> 
> > At first I could switch to a console via ctrl-alt-f1 but when I tried
> > to switch back to X, the keyboard was locked.
> >
> > I could find no other way to recover but via the reset button.
> >
> > Upon reboot the stock i386 kernel couldn't find the ext3 journal and
> > the reboot process stopped.
> >
> > I tried recovery mode, but just got a lot of drive seek errors and a
> > kernel panic at the end.
> 
> These drive seek errors and kernel panics are tell tale signs of a drive
> going bad.  That means your data may have already been lost and having
> backups might be good right now.
> 
> >
> > I know how to use a rescue disk to get back into my Hoary system, if
> > indeed this is even possible. If so, is there a command line way to
> > rebuild the journal?
> 
> To my knowledge, fsck should be able to fix this and it should be run
> over unclean file systems at boot time.  The journal isn't really all
> that special but for recovery time and if the journal is corrupt, it
> should just fsck the entire disk.
> 
> A good way to get the disk mounted and get your data off of it is to
> mount it as an ext2fs.  Ext2 is Ext3 without a journal.  You should just
> be able to use the same command youve been using to mount the ext3fs and
> substitude ext3 with ext2.
> 
> I would move everything off the disk as soon as possible.
> 
> --
> Scott Henson <scotth at csee.wvu.edu>
> 
> 
> 

Fortunately grub can still read the menu.lst file (or whatever). 

David

-- 
Registered Linux User #297958
http://carney1979.blogspot.com/