having trouble mounting or something

carniomana · 08-20-2003, 10:17 AM

I'm getting an error message during startup:

EXT2-fs error (device ide0(3,5))) ext2_check_descriptors: block bitmap for block 72 not in group block (2299600674)
EXT2-fs: group descriptors corrupted!
Kernel Panic: VFS: unable to mount root fs on 03:05

It's an old version of linux... dont know which one, cause it's at a texaco xpress lube store... none of us can get it to work, and the tech support wont help cause we dont pay for their service. Any ideas on what I can do to bypass/fix the problem and log on to the system?

carniomana · 08-20-2003, 10:41 AM

is there some kind of command or anything i can type in during the boot, or any way for me to pause the boot sequence for a command prompt, etc?

also.... would removing the motherboard and battery fix the problem or no?

andrewlkho · 08-20-2003, 11:09 AM

Removing the motherboard and battery would not help, no. Get a boot disk, and see if you can mount it. It may be corrupted.

If you see no problem apparent, chroot into it, and re-compile the kernel. That's my best guess I'm afraid, although it soudns as if there's something wrong with your root filesystem. run a scan on it just in case.

carniomana · 08-20-2003, 11:14 AM

how do i get boot disk?
how do i mount?
what is chroot and what do i do... also same about recompiling kernel... i have no knowledge of linux, and this system is totally old school.

andrewlkho · 08-20-2003, 11:20 AM

okie dokie, what distro are you using? If you hunt around the internet enough, I'm sure you can find the files for a boot disk. If not, let me know, and I'll put the files for a slack boot disk for you, which should still work. It's basically a floppy that you boot from that gives you a command line to work from.

man mount for more information on google - I'm sure you can find the man pages somewhere on the internet. It basically mounts the partition that your root filesystem is on onto a location. The man pages are linux's documentation for each utility

chroot is a program to enter a location and make it root...man chroot for more info.

There's a thread around [I think on the slackware forum] about recompiling the kernel. It's quite straightforward.

carniomana · 08-20-2003, 11:23 AM

thanks... what's a distro and how do i know which it's using?

Skyline · 08-20-2003, 01:31 PM

A good general boot floppy :

http://www.toms.net/rb/

carniomana · 08-20-2003, 02:49 PM

is there anyway to make a boot disk from a comp using windows xp... i dont have a linux system to make the boot up floppy.... i got the files, but without being able to format i couldnt use them.

Finlay · 08-20-2003, 03:02 PM

if you really need this fixed then you should call someone in your area that works on linux machines.
unless someone feels liking making you a boot floppy that will automatically do everything. most likely the hard drive has some bad sectors and has finally corrupted the file system. even if you reinstalled the problem would remain.

i don't mean to sound negative, just being realistic

andrewlkho · 08-20-2003, 08:02 PM

Download the files from skyline's link, and then copy them onto a floppy. A distro is a version / package of linux. Common ones include Mandrake, Debian, Slackware, SuSE and Redhat.

carniomana · 08-20-2003, 08:33 PM

it's redhat 2.0
we found an install disk for redhat... cant tell which partition it was installed on before... and when we tried picking one of the partitions there and set everything up it just says "making ext2 filesystem on /dev/hda5" and sits there FOREVER.
We also have "kickstart" floppy disks, and the "recovery" function of the options for installing says it doesnt work w/o a recovery img disk... but obviously we dont already have one.
I guess what I'm asking is how would I find out which partition has what.. and why it wont install right on that one partition... would we have to delete the partition first or no?

andrewlkho · 08-21-2003, 04:50 AM

redhat 2.0????!! surely not....that's *seriously* old school.

How big is /dev/hda5? It shouldn't "sit there FOREVER". How are you installing it? If you want to reinstall, I would suggest you wipe all of the partitions, and start with a later version.

pe2338 · 08-21-2003, 08:12 AM

I agree with ho_10 ! Get a newer version of linux (no matter the distribution).

But Redhat is the most common for newbies and I recomend it.
DON'T try to install a very recent version, an older one is better as you might not have so much room (RedHat 6.0 would be good).

Oh, by the way, does your PC have a CDROM drive?