[xubuntu-users] harddisk failure, or Xubuntu refuses to load

[Joshua O'Leary]

On 15/07/12 22:07, Liviu Andronic wrote:
> On Sun, Jul 15, 2012 at 10:42 PM, Joshua O'Leary
> <joshua.oleary at btinternet.com> wrote:
>> Giving the output of sudo fdisk -l /dev/sda would be very helpful, to find
>> out which area of the hard disk is damaged/faulty/corrupted. That way, we
>> can compare it to the error, and find out what is actually affected. Running
>>
> As far as I can tell the (obvious) error seems to be located on the
> /dev/sda6 (root) partition. To get sizes in sectors instead of
> cylinders, I used:
> fdisk -lu /dev/sda
>
> Disk /dev/sda: 320.1 GB, 320072933376 bytes
> 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 38913 cylinders, total 625142448 sectors
> Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
> Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
> I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
> Disk identifier: 0xd9b3496e
>
>     Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
> /dev/sda1            2048    30717951    15357952   1c  Hidden W95 FAT32 (LBA)
> /dev/sda2   *    30717952   186996599    78139324    7  HPFS/NTFS
> /dev/sda3       186996661   614695094   213849217    f  W95 Ext'd (LBA)
> /dev/sda5       186996663   187607069      305203+  83  Linux
> /dev/sda6       187607133   240862544    26627706   83  Linux
> /dev/sda7       240862608   252124109     5630751   82  Linux swap / Solaris
> /dev/sda8       293089923   614695094   160802586   83  Linux
> /dev/sda9       252124173   253152269      514048+  83  Linux
>
> Partition table entries are not in disk order
>
>
>> badblocks on the drive may also see if there are any other problems. When
>>
> Good idea. I forgot about this command.
>
>
>> you run xfce4-notes from terminal, what does it output? You could try
>>
> Nothing, really. I tried a gdb debug but since I have no symbols, I
> didn't bother to pursue.
>
>
>> resetting xfce (rm -rf ~/.config/xfce4), which may lose some settings but
>> remove any problematic config files.
>>
> I accessed via a file editor the Notes related files in
> ~/.config/xfce4 and it went fine. So I assume the issue is not there.
> Perhaps the 'xfce4-notes' binary itself got corrupted. In any case,
> the Notes panel plugin loads and works fine, so I am not sure there's
> reason to investigate this.
>
> Regards
> Liviu
>
 From comparing the sector error to the partition table, the problem 
seems to be with this partition:
/dev/sda6       187607133   240862544    26627706   83  Linux
Not sure whether this is the rootfs or your home partition, you would 
need to get the UUID of this partition, and compare it to /etc/fstab.

Joshua