Hi

I've been working on fixing a lot of problems with my slackware 8.1 install
these past few weeks. Everything has been working swell except a few
minor things needing working out. Tonight i've set my goal on getting
LILO to boot from the hard disk, i've been using a boot floppy for the
past week.

On first installtion of slack lilo said it could not write to the superblock and when I wrote to the MBR I also got an error. So i've been using a
boot floppy to boot for the past week.

Here is how the story goes.
I thought maybe the lilo issues were because i had not yet formated
a 5 gig partition I'm intending to use for a windows 98. Yeah sounds
strange but I didn't know what else to go on at the time.

I have a 60gig Western digital drive paritioned like this:
5 gig - fat 32
45 gig - / linux (ext2?)
500 mb - swap for linux
5 gig - DOS (?)
what ever was left was left as free space

Here is what I did right before all the trouble.

Edited lilo.conf
Commented out the line LBA support with a #
But I don't see how that would effect anything as LILO
never load or worked, and I'm pretty sure I rebooted after
making this change and had no ill effects.

Next I did:

The 5 gig - fat 32 This parition wasn't mounted or formated so I did.
'mkdosfs -F 32 /dev/hda1'
I then rebooted with a windows 98 boot floppy to check out that drive
It was and for some reason I decided to format it again. UGh
format c: /q /s
While formating I got a message from the BIOS saying it wanted to write
to the boot record and i said ok. When the format was complete it said
5 gigs total so I didn't format the wrong drive.

I then rebooted and used my linux boot floppy.
Half way though boot up I get these messages
-----------------
hda: read_intr: status=0x51 {driveready seck compatable error
hda: read_intr: error=0x10 {sector ID not found }, LBA sect = 256442384, sector=16

this message continues down the screen till i see

end_request: I/O error, dev 03:02 (hda), sector 16
read_super_block: bread failed (dev 03:02, block 8, size 1024)
kernel panic: VFS: Unable to mount the root fs on 03:02
-----------------

I've been able to boot with the bootable slack 8.1 CD
and hitting <enter> to load the default kernel bare.i

Passing these commands get me a kernel panic with
the above message of hda: read_int. Just like the boot
floppy.
bare.i root=/dev/hda2 noinitd
bare.i root=/dev/hda noinitd


Here is what I've done:

mount -t ext2 /dev/hda2 /mnt/olddta
Returns:
"mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock
on /dev/hda2 or too many files systems mounted."

Now interestingly if I do
cfdisk /dev/hda
I see "fatal error, bat primary partition O: partion ends before sector 0"

Now with fsck attempts

'e2fsck -v -y /dev/hda2'
"attempting to read the block from filesystem resulted
in short read while trying to open /dev/hda2
could this be a zero-lenth parition?"

'e2fsck -v -y /dev/hda'
"couldn't find ext2 superblock , trying backup
/sbin/e2fsck: bad magic number in superblock
while trying to open /dev/hda
...... ...then the super block is corrupted and
might try running e2fsck with and alternative
superblock: e2fsck -b 8193 /dev/hda"

'e2fsck -b 8193 /dev/hda2'
"attempting to read the block from filesystem resulted
in short read while trying to open /dev/hda2
could this be a zero-length parition?"

fsck -y -v -f /dev/hda
"bad super block error message... "

fsck -y -v -f /dev/hda2
" zero-length error message..."

fsck /dev/hda2
"bad super block error message"

fsck /dev/hda
"zero-length error"


It seems something was always wrong. I never thought much of
the LILO config error of not being able to write to the superblock
or MBR but not it seems to add into the puzzle. The system
booted fine with the floopy that whole time though.
Also I wanted to mention the hard drive was new out of the box.
And I had used the slack 'cfdisk' command to partition the drive.

Sorry for the length of my post but I wanted to show what i've
tried and the messages I got back.

Alex

I think that the next thing that you should check is the partition table. Use fdisk to print the partition table as a simple way to see if the partition table is OK or corrupt.

___________________________________
Be prepared. Create a LifeBoat CD.
http://users.rcn.com/srstites/LifeBo...home.page.html

Steve Stites

Hi
Good idea here is the output from fdisk
It looks promising but I'm not sure how to fix it.

fdisk /dev/hda

The number of cylinder for this drive is set to 7753
There is nothing wrong with that but this is lager than 1024,
and could in certain setups cause problems with
1) Software that runs at boot time (e.g. older version of LILO
2) Booting and paritioning software from other OSs
Dos, FDISK, etc



Disk /dev/hda: 240 heads, 63 sectors, 7753 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 15120 * 512 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System

/dev/hda1 ? 128045 250522 925929529+ 68 Unknown
Partition 1 does not end on cylinder boundary:
phys=(288, 101, 46) should be (288, 239, 63)

/dev/hda2 ? 87976 123622 269488144 79 Unknown
Partition 2 does not end on cylinder boundary:
phys=(0, 13, 10) should be (0, 239, 63)

/dev/hda3 ? 35648 128132 699181456 53 OnTrack DM6 Aux3
Partition 3 does not end on cylinder boundary:

phys=(324, 77, 19) should be (324, 239, 63)

(***I have no idea what the ON track DM6 Aux Means
I think that was my swap partition though.****)

/dev/hda4 ? 92238 92239 10668+ 49 Unknown
Partition 4 does not end on cylinder boundary:

phys=(335, 78, 2) should be (335, 239, 63)

Partition table entries are not in disk order



Command (m for help): v (Verify)

Partition 1 does not end on cylinder boundary:
phys=(288, 101, 46) should be (288, 239, 63)

Partition 2 does not end on cylinder boundary:

phys=(0, 13, 10) should be (0, 239, 63)

Partition 3 does not end on cylinder boundary:
phys=(324, 77, 19) should be (324, 239, 63)
Warning: partition 1 overlaps partition 3.

Partition 4 does not end on cylinder boundary:
phys=(335, 78, 2) should be (335, 239, 63)
Warning: partition 2 overlaps partition 4.
Warning: partition 3 overlaps partition 4.

Total allocated sectors -507114401 greater than the maximum 117225360

"here is the output from fdisk"

I think that you may have a problem in your partition table but I am not sure what the problem is. When I do:
fdisk -l /dev/hda
I get a nice neat table:


Disk /dev/hda: 120.0 GB, 120034123776 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 14593 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 * 1 2420 19438618+ 83 Linux
/dev/hda2 2421 2805 3092512+ 83 Linux
/dev/hda3 2806 4016 9727357+ 83 Linux
/dev/hda4 4017 14593 84959752+ 83 Linux


This table is a nice neat map of hda and all of the disk space is accounted for. Try fdisk -l /dev/hda and see if all of your disk space is properly accounted for.

___________________________________
Be prepared. Create a LifeBoat CD.
http://users.rcn.com/srstites/LifeBo...home.page.html

Steve Stites

is your windows partition booting? if so a workaround would be to use loadlin. (-edit it isn't booting anything off the hd is it)

I am no linux version fdisk expert, actually I really screwed up some test/learning drives with it, but I don't remember it ever displaying MBR/bootstrap information unless it is in the raw expert view in hexadecimal form.
The MBR may be screwed, I've had it happen on a wd (western digital) 6gig while lilo 'ing to the MBR. I am not familiar with a linux based MBR formatter/signer (what am I saying, lilo of course), but there is the undocumented windows 98 (dos 7.0) command that can maybe get you to boot to windows/dos: "fdisk /mbr", BUT BEFORE YOU TRY IT READ THIS -- http://www.cknow.com/vtutor/vtfdiskmbr.htm -- !!!! (and remove any other hd's, target drive should be on ide0). The command is on the win98 startup disk. Using the windows version of fdisk can potentially rewrite the whole partition table destroying any linux partitions. -edit Linux version fdisk maybe able to fix the MBR and or bootstrap but that is way out of my league. On the wd site there are programs you can download to possibly fix the drive and/or restore the factory partition information. In my opinion its current state is garbage (even though it can boot from floppy does not mean the drive is stable) and should be re-partitioned, but save any config files you have already set up to a backup.

--- begin rant ---

When I set up a dual boot with win98 and linux I have found these steps to work well to make windows and linux happy:

1. pray
2. boot win98 startup,
3. press appropriate key to ignore cdrom driver stuff and get to command prompt,
4. use windows/dos version of "fdisk" to make windows/dos partition and flag as bootable or primary (or something similar, i forget),
5. reboot from floppy as before,
6. use "format c: /s" to make it a fat32 (vfat); the /s will transfer the system (bootstrap) files from a: to c: making c: bootable (to check partition for bad blocks while formating /c can be added after /s) (alternatively after formating you can use "sys a: c:" to transfer the system files),
7. reboot this time to c; make sure it's bootable and working and gives you a command prompt (don't load up a full win98 until all partitions are finished to save time if something goes wrong),
8. reboot this time using slackware disk 1, or workable method
at bash prompt use "cfdisk /dev/hda" to create linux partitions as all logical (logical drives start at hda5, hda2 will then be the extended partition automatically and only used to map the logical partitions' tables) (any other "primary" partitions besides the first one at the beginning of the drive (hda1) will be ignored by win98 completely) (don't alter hda1 or the previous steps will be destroyed, correction alter hda1 bootable flag if it is not flagged already but not its size or type),
9. reboot again with slackware cd, or workable method,
10. install minimal linux just for testing purposes (personally, on my mission critical dual-boot computers, where the user is a microslave, I skip the lilo installation script/package section completely, not giving them the option to use it, and boot linux with "loadlin" from dos (this prevents confusion when users tries to "fix" their win98 with advice from other windows users/techs/manual or guide)),
11. reboot a couple times to each os,
12. scandisk windows/dos partition,
14. e2fsck (or fsck, I think they run the same program but haven't checked) linux partitions (besides swap),
15. reboot with win98 startup floppy, loading cdrom drivers,
16. begin the tedious and boring installation of win98,
17. defrag win98 (defrag sucks, norton speedisk is much much better -IMHO) (windows 98 installation leaves gapping holes and totally caotic placement of files on disk),
17.5. scandisk win98,
18. install win98 hardware drivers,
19. test hardware in win98,
20. begin installation of slackware -this time full or whatever is needed without altering hda1 (alternativly you can just use the "pkgtool" program to install the needed slackware packages),
21. compile custom kernel for specific hardware needs and for performance,
22. test kernel,
23. now the last step is to install and configure any applications you need for either os,
24. seek medical attention

it's good to get that off my chest, thank you for the opportunity.

It seems/feels like voodoo to use windows/dos programs to setup the windows/dos partitions then linux programs for linux stuff, but it makes windows happy. Microsoft hides so much from us I am still not convinced that linux can set up a windows partition and filesystem perfectly.

sorry for all the dos vomit on a respectable linux forum

-- end rant with apologies --

p.s. on my wd 6gig nothing, even factory re-certification low-level format, has been able to get the drive to boot into any os without outside help from a floppy or (as currently installed and functional) another hd that lilo works on.

Jailbait:
Here is 'fdisk -l /dev/hda' shows
It doesn't look very good. I'm going to do
some searching at the forum here on fixing a bad
partition table. Maybe I'll turn something up.
Thanks for the help

-------
Units = cylinders of 15120 * 512 bytes
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System

/dev/hda1 ? 128045 250522 925929529+ 68 Unknown
Partition 1 does not end on cylinder boundary:
phys=(288, 101, 46) should be (288, 239, 63)

/dev/hda2 ? 87976 123622 269488144 79 Unknown
Partition 2 does not end on cylinder boundary:
phys=(0, 13, 10) should be (0, 239, 63)

/dev/hda3 ? 35648 128132 699181456 53 OnTrack DM6 Aux3
Partition 3 does not end on cylinder boundary:
phys=(324, 77, 19) should be (324, 239, 63)

/dev/hda4 ? 92238 92239 10668+ 49 Unknown
Partition 4 does not end on cylinder boundary:
phys=(335, 78, 2) should be (335, 239, 63)

Partition table entries are not in disk order

-------------------------------

Skitzo,
Wow thanks for the explanation on how you dual boot
your slackware/win98 system. I printed all that and
I'm going to follow it on the next install. It looks
to me a great plan. I have one question though regarding using the logical partitions for linux. Why did you
not create the linux root partition as a primary?
Like hda2 as /


Thanks for the tip on fdisk /mbr. I've been holding
out on using that as a last resort option. After
reading that article I'm a bit more reluctant to
even use it although in the past i've never ran into
trouble...

Alex

"It doesn't look very good. I'm going to do
some searching at the forum here on fixing a bad
partition table. Maybe I'll turn something up."

Fixing a bad partition table tends to be an all or nothing one shot try. If you screw up the fix then you will probably have to repartition the drive, reformat all of the partitions, and reinstall everything. So the first thing to do is to back up everything that you possibly can.

About the only thing that you can try is to have fdisk write a new partition table that is exactly the same as the original, good partition table. So what you try to do is to set up a new partition table in fdisk that is exactly the same as the original partition table and then write it to the hard drive. You probably will only get one shot at this. You cannot do it by trial and error.

___________________________________
Be prepared. Create a LifeBoat CD.
http://users.rcn.com/srstites/LifeBo...home.page.html

Steve Stites

Well the only good news is that this was a 'test' install

I had planned on repartitioning the HD after I got
acquainted with this version of slackware. The only
thing on the drive is a few dozen important emails
which i'm still hoping to retrieve along with some
config files I had hoped to backup before. The config
files are no big deal because I recorded down what I
changed added in my notebook.

By the way can you help with accessing my files?
In my first post I wrote what happens when I mount
a partition.

-
mount -t ext2 /dev/hda2 /mnt/olddta
Returns:
"mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock
on /dev/hda2 or too many files systems mounted."
-
are there any mistakes in my mount command?

hda2 is /
hda3 is swap



I wanted to mention also when I boot with the windows
bootdisk (DOS bootdisk). I can no longer see drive C.
Doing 'fdisk c:' returns a no partition found type error.

I talked about it with my associate and we couldn't find a real good reason not to use / on hda2 as primary either (thus the extended partition would then become hda3 but inaccessible as is the norm). But there are programs for windows that can access the ext2 filesystem, and if the fs you want to access is on a second primary, my guess is that it windows will not even admit that it exists let alone read from it. I am positive that windows ignores any second primary partitions (I hide a backup of my main win98 and use partition magic 8.0 to activate it as needed, I have not studied just how it gets windows to un-primary hda1). But I am not sure, I have never tried those applications to read ext2 in win98.

Definitive answer why I put / on hdd5 on dual boot system: I am still stuck in a "msdos 5.0" way of thinking while setting up hardware, d'oh.

Linux seems to run a / just fine on a logical partition with no apparent speed hit (whereas windows will fail even if the bios is made to boot off a logical partition, bios tries to read a bootstrap from or directly looks for io.sys etc. , execs, and io.sys returns that it cannot continue or something, -I've only seen it happen once on someone else's comp that had the ability.)

Try to fix it as jailbait instructs, but IMHO, because there are fat32's on the drive which are unstable compared to ext2 (windos/dos writes files in weird places and potentially changes the partition tables while useing the "format" command), I would backup and just wipe the whole drive to factory fresh (wd program is probably dos or drdos etc. based and on floppy bootable).

Dos based "fdisk c:" is a syntax error? just use "fdisk" (fdisk reads whole drives and has options to switch to another drive in its ui (user interface)) Win98 startup disk has several unmentioned versions, get a brand new win98se startup floppy image off the net and use that if possible. There is even a gnu fdisk clone that is out there somewhere which may be better.

BTW "format" with /q argument is bad for use on any partition containing an os, and should be only used on "scratch disks".

Break a leg.

"By the way can you help with accessing my files?
In my first post I wrote what happens when I mount
a partition.

-
mount -t ext2 /dev/hda2 /mnt/olddta
Returns:
"mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock
on /dev/hda2 or too many files systems mounted."
-
are there any mistakes in my mount command?

hda2 is /
hda3 is swap"

I looked through your posts and could not find what system you are using to do the repair work. If you are using knoppix then:

knoppix mounts everything as read only when it boots up. Issue a mount command without any parameter to find out what is mounted and then umount it, for example:
umount /dev/hda2

Then whether you are using knoppix or some other rescue system continue with:

Then mount /dev/hda2 as read/write:
mkdir /memphis
mount -t ext2 /dev/hda2 /memphis

Then you should be able to access your files through the /memphis directory.
Actually, what I just told you may be what you are already doing. I am just not sure exactly what you tried.

If you get /dev/hda2 mounted correctly then try:
ls -l /memphis/*
to see what you have and take it from there. If you get that far then you can probably mount a floppy:
mkdir /nashville
mount -t msdos /dev/fd0 /nashville
and copy some of your files to the floppy.
cp /memphis/home/user/emails/* /nashville
when you fill up the floppy:
umount /nashville
and mount the next floppy and copy some more files.


If your floppies are formatted as ext2 then the mount command is:
mount -t msdos /dev/fd0 /nashville
___________________________________
Be prepared. Create a LifeBoat CD.
http://users.rcn.com/srstites/LifeBo...home.page.html

Steve Stites

"By the way can you help with accessing my files?"

I use http://www.lnx-bbc.org/ for emergency recovery, haven't tried knoppix but word is that it rocks. bbc takes a while to get accustomed to

I'm pretty green for data recovery on linux. I was using my slackware
Bootable CD and loading bare.i to get into my system. I looked up knoppix
on the Internet and what they have looks like a excellent repair tool. I
tried to find a ISO image to burn a bootable disk but I didn't find it on the
ftp i was on. Maybe I missed it. I'll just order one instead as it looks like it
be a great tool. Thanks for the mention. I did end up burning a bootable
CD of lnx-bbc though it was only 50MB's, thanks Skitzo. Pretty slick!

Back to the partition though. When I booted with lnx-bbc I tried to
mount my partitions again and I got the same old message "wrong file
system, bad option, or bad superblock" I tried each partition and a
variation of switches, no luck.

Next I tried thee old copy of partition magic.
The hard disk is displayed as 'partition table error 116 found"
Which the manual basically translated to saying that a there was
a possibility of two different operating systems reporting different
hard disk geometries.

And my last attempt was with the western digital data lifeguard tools
bootable CD' Looks like this program can fix it either as it shows a hard
drive partition error also. Darn it all. I'm going to go ahead and
format the drive, it doesn't look like i'm going to be able to recover
anything. I think i'm going to go ahead and use partition magic and the
boot manager. It looks pretty spiffy and it seems to support linux
partitions with no poblem.

Thanks for all your help.
I appreciate all the time and effort you've given me.

Alex

After thinking about your and my previous experiences with hd partition trashing by unfriendly winbloze programs, and while preparing a drive for a dual boot, I decided to look deeper into different apps and programs that handle partitioning. In a post somewhere here in the forums, someone mentioned sfdisk, in its man page they have an explanation of which dos programs mess which parts of the disk. Also in the page was a good reason not to use /dev/hda2, but I can't remember it (jees I read it only ~14 hours ago). I wouldn't use sfdisk to write partitions, they actually recommend cfdisk in its docs, but it has some backup procedures that may be of use. And here is a link posted here -- http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...842#post745842 -- by kLUMSY bOT, is very good, but for winxp. Damn windoze and there dirty tricks, there is no practical reason I can think of to treat hardware the way they do, unless to... its not worth thinking about. I think loadlin -- http://elserv.ffm.fgan.de/~lermen/ -- is best where win98 is critical. I have some nice menus that I use to load Linux from dos 7.0 (win98), driven by config.sys and autoexec.bat. I can post them at request, they need some editing to take out my system specific stuff and to comment them.

Check out -- http://www.anandtech.com/guides/viewfaq.html?i=138 --. " dd if=/dev/hda of=mbr-name.img count=1 " will backup the MBR they say. "dd" is very powerful, care must be taken.

i'm sorry that i probably won't be of much help here, but i have been thru some similar hassles and while i can't remember it all, will suggest what i can.
make sure your bios settings concur with the partitioning scheme you want, in particular, see what the hdd detection gives you about the hd-i'm not currently up to speed on the lba thing, but cfdisk is the way to go and the hd description it gives you should match the one the bios shows in setup-the lba business may come in here, i just remember having to adjust some stuff to get everything on the same page.
wiping and repartitioning was next for me. first partition should be primary and bootable for windows(and install it first-it will write the mbr), then a primary for /and a small extended for swap-the log partitions will not be numbered in direct sequence w/ the prim-first one hda5 i think-then you've got two primaries left to do what you want(and many more logicals(15 at this point i think)
the last partition should include all of the remaining space on the hd or it will be lost as unusable
(at least in my case it was)- the good thing here is cfdisk will let you rework everything easily before you write the table.
windows will then take the mbr and i have had better luck with putting lilo at the start of / (though it has worked on mbr and apparently grub does good at this, main thing is let windows do its thing before you come in and let linux rule)
this is a jumble i know but it's been awhile and maybe this will get you a little momentum.
by the way, there is a tool out there which i had and for the life of me i can't remember(started with a b, i think[barn or something, i may just be out there on this]), but it would allow you to search the hd almost bit by bit for data not by filename, but by location so you could scan until you recognize what you were seeking and then extract, clean up the edges,so to speak, and rename as a file-the data recovery people probably would be where to get this.
my suggestions may be bs, but my sympathy is genuine; i've been there, good luck.

Icehenge...sorry for interrupting...

I might try knoppix...

But I want to add...I'm using the slackware and mandrake distribution...
My slackware is on /dev/hda9, my Mandrake is /dev/hda8

I tried to recover my files by making my harddisk a slave with another Linux (Slack)...
thus resulting my partitions became /dev/hdbX ...
I mount my slackware --- it went fine...
I mount my windoze98 --- it went fine...
I mount my mandrake --- the error occured
[mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/hdb8, or too many mounted file systems]

I tried also my Mandrake to recover my files...and still Mandrake partition refuses...
Do this knoppix applicable in any kind of Linux distribution 'coz I might try it....

Thanks,

BTW: my slackware and mandrake were formatted using Reiserfs....