Not sure if this should be in the suse forum or not...:

I shutdown and physically moved my suse 9.0 box today. Upon restarting hung for what seemed like a long time at "grub loading stage2", then dumped me to grub command line. I was not able to do anything from the command line (perhaps should say, I don't know how to do anything from the grub command line).

Loaded the SuSE CD. Selecting the "boot from hard disk" option failed (could not find root partition).

From there I tried the repair installation option. Automatic repair does the following:

The messages, relevant to my problem, that came up were:

-> Executing file system check for partition /dev/hda2
-> Error detected
-> The Reiser file system of the partition /dev/hda2 is corrupted. To repair the file system, press "Repair"
I pressed "Repair"
-> Repair was successful

-> Executing file system check for partition /dev/hda2 (repeat)
-> Error detected
-> The Reiser file system of the partition /dev/hda2 is corrupted. To repair the file system, press "Repair"
I pressed "Repair"
-> Error: Changing environment to target system was no successful

-> Check boot loader configuration
-> Searching configuration files...
-> The following configuration files were not found: /etc/sysconfig/kernel
-> Error: The file %1 was not found. YaST can not recover this file

The repair process than ended. I still can't boot up.

I've tried knoppix, but it isn't able to mount hda2 either. I'm desperate to at least get the data off this disk, but am completely at a loss as to what to do next. Thoughts or suggestions would be very welcome!

Have you tried opening up the box and checking the cabling to the drive?

Also, have you noticed any unusual ticking noises from your disk recently (as these usually indicate a dying cylinder)?

rjlee:

Yes, I checked the cabling, even tried putting the hard drive into a different box, w/ the same problem. I haven't heard anything unusual from the drive; it's seemed fine to this point.

Is it too early for a celebratory drunk?

Managed to recover the data from the disk (ended up w/ 4 lost and found files, which look like system files).

Ended up using dd_rescue w/ dd_rhelp as a front end to do a direct copy of the damaged partition; was then able to work directly on the file that it created. (copies dd_rescue and dd_rhelp both available at: ftp://129.79.136.75/software/, pick the distro of your choice. Benefit over dd is that it doesn't stop at bad sectors). The new file was written to a different hd, so I was able to muck w/o further risk to the original data.

So, I went to work on the new file. Initially reiserfsck --check was failing (bread: "End of file, cannot read block"). Next tried reiserfsck --rebuildtree, which ran successfully (though w/ a few warnings). Finally, reiserfsck --rebuild-tree.

After that, mount -o loop /mnt/hdd3/dead_drive.dd /mnt/recovery did the trick. I have a mounted filesystem with what looks like everything I thought I'd lost.

Did I mention that this disk contained unbacked-up copies of my wife's dissertation research data?

Back ups, young man, backups.

After I'm sure I've recovered all the data, I'm going to try the same process on the hard disk--will see if it's just a corrupt file system (which would suggest a bad shutdown), or if it is actually a bad drive (i.e. damaged during the move).

Thanks for the tips and advice.