Hello out there,

I'm having a problem with my linuxbox. Redhat 8.0

I unmounted a bad filesystem to check for errors.

fsck it says:

fsck 1.27 (8-Mar-2002)
e2fsck 1.27 (8-Mar-2002)
fsck.ext3: Attempt to read block from filesystem resulted in short read while checking ext3 journal for /data1

I cannot mount the device again

fdisk -l device says:

Disk /dev/hda9: 255 heads, 63 sectors, 2511 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 bytes

Disk /dev/hda9 doesn't contain a valid partition table

Now I'm desperate looking for another option than "mke2fs -S"

Thanks in advance

/mj

What happens when you run disk druid? Can it see /dev/hda9?

If it can, you can add it back in while not disturbing the data. Disk druid was the partioner you may have used when you loaded RedHat. It runs under X, so you get the nice GUI look and feel, if that matters to you.

Cheers--
Charles

Welcome to LQ, madsjakob!!

Do you know what the blocksize for your /dev/hda9 is? For RH8, it the default has always been 4k as far as I've seen . That means, there would be a backup superblock at 32768, 98304, 163840 etc. Assuming sparse_super, as default for ext3 . If you had sparse_super unset at filesystem creation, there will be one at every multiple of 32768 ( 8*4k ).

I would try passing the -B 4096 ( or whatever your blocksize is ) option to e2fsck. Read up on the -b option at e2fsck(8) also, so you can pass it a specific superblock at the end of the disk for instance as -b 12345678, if you know that area is intact.

Like you said, I'd save mke2fs -S as a last option, but if you know the blocksize it should be less dangerous than it sounds; of course at that point, we won't have much of a choice.

HTH. Let us know how it goes.

Hi,

It seems that the problem is not the bad superblock but the partition in question seems to have some bad blcoks.So try
e2fsck -c device
then mount it back again.

Bye

Thank you fellas I really appreciate your help although the disk went really bad - so bad that i didn't even have a chance to try out any of your suggestions.

Anyways I've spend the whole night trying to reestablish the system on a new disk and I'm not done yet - most of the scripts are lost

Thanks again

/mj

I had a disk go south.

e2fsck returns:
e2fsck: Attempt to read block from filesystem resulted in short read while checking ext3 journal for /usr2

No matter what I tell fsck, I get this, unless I give it the -b option and the block number of a non-backup superblock in which case it complains about that.

It seems like fsck isn't even trying. It finds that the journal is bad and gives up. What should I do?