Recovering a damaged ext3 system, where to start?

[Christoph Georgi]

I would recommend to backup you brother's harddrive fist in case 
something goes wrong. If you get ssh to work, maybe you can use rsync to 
backup his data to your machine (?!) after mounting the broken fs using 
knoppix (if that's possible). Another possibility is to make an 1:1 copy 
of his harddrive to another for example external harddrive by using the 
dd command:

$ dd if=/dev/hda of=/media/sda1/hdd_image

(change the drives accordingly)
In case something messes up during the fsck the image can be copied back 
to his harddrive..

I once had the same problem and everything went fine with fsck, but in 
case data that ought not to be lost is stored on you brother's hdd, a 
backup is a reasonable thing to do.

.christoph


Cef wrote:
> On Tue, 8 Mar 2005 04:42, Neil Woolford wrote:
> 
>>I've now tried booting from the live on my system and forcing a check on
>>the (good) file system.  So far so good, I can certainly talk him through
>>that on the phone.
>>
>>So I've put a disc set in the post to him by express mail :-)
> 
> 
> You may be able to get him to boot using the LiveCD, and then take remote 
> control of his system/connect to it via ssh. This may or may not work, but 
> since you have a LiveCD there, you could try to do this and then instruct 
> your brother on how to do that once the LiveCD is running. This could be a 
> lot easier than walking him through fsck, as there are no decisions to be 
> made on his part. It'll just be a routine to follow.
> 
> Once you've got remote control/access of some kind, then you can do your best 
> to fix it, and with any luck, he'll be up and running in no time.
> 

-- 


Christoph Georgi
-----------------------------
email.  christoph.georgi at web.de
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