Hi!

I have a Fedora installation on a HP laptop. As of today, I can no
longer boot. Here is what I get:

Booting Fedora Core (2.6.9-1.667)

...

Uncompressing Linux ... Ok, booting the kernel.
audit(1181914265.020:0): initialized
Red Hat nash version 4.1.18 starting
^[[MJBD: IO error reading journal superblock
EXT3-fs: error loading journal
mount: error 22 mounting ext3
mount: error 2 mounting none
switchroot: mount failed: 22
umount /initrd/dev failed: 2
Kernel panic - not syncing: Attempted to kill init!

I have read up on superblocks, superblock copies, how to retrieve
superblock copies, etc. Before I make a (possibly fatal) mistake,
I would appreciate someone advice on what to do. I would prefer to
recover my data as opposed to reformatting the disk.

Thanks!

Christian

PS: I am a fairly experienced Unix user, but I am not an administrator.

First, try booting up with a livecd like sidux or knoppix and see if you can read the data on the problem partition from there. If you can, backup to an external hard drive or another partition before trying anything else. You can also unmount the problem partition and run your fsck utilties from there in an attempt to repair the filesystem.