Something must really be wrong with this machine because fdisk -l just returns nothing.

Ethan

I decided to try to re-write the partition table using fdisk, but when I tried

# fdisk /dev/hda

it returned

#Unable to read /dev/hda


Ethan

I am completely lost on this one. Can you give that program up there a try?

Good Luck

I'll give it a try.

Ethan

Update: bought new RH 7.3 disks and booted into "linux rescue" mode. Unlike my rescue floppy, the RH CD was able to mount partitions and run e2fsck.

Once I finally got /dev/hda5 mounted, it turned out that there was something wrong with the /etc directory. Couldn't cd into that directory or list its contents. The bootup error message had said something like "can't find inittab" so I presume that inittab is a file in /etc. Running

# e2fsck -pfyv /dev/hda5

but that did save /etc, in fact after that /etc was no longer listed by ls.

I haven't tried the e2salvage program. I'd like to attempt to get some of my files off the machine first. I may try to copy the /etc directory from a working machine to this one, just for the heck of it.

Thanks for all the help. I'll post the results of trying e2salvage.

By the way, my rescue floppy was "tomsrtbt". It had worked well in the past so maybe the floppy itself got messed up somehow.

Ethan

I wanted to try the e2salvage program, but my Thinkpad T22 can't use its floppy and CD drives at the same time. I have had no luck with boot floppies. If I can't boot from a floppy and then mount another floppy, I can't run the program. So it looks like this system is hosed.

The root problem seems to be the Thinkpad's tendency to go into sleep or suspend mode unexpectedly and then refuse to wake up. From a little research, it appears that this is a common problem with Thinkpads. When I had to force a restart to wake the machine up, it came back with essetial files corrupted.

Ethan

Oh man, that really sucks! Maybe next time around you can disable suck a feature, maybe in the bios or kernel options? Good Luck and piecing it back together

Cool

Actually, I had turned off the automatic suspend features in the BIOS, yet the machine suspends anyway, even with the power cord plugged in. I need to contact IBM about it.

I've had lousy luck with laptops. First my Hitachi was stolen right from my house, then my Toshiba up and died, now this IBM is freaking out. Maybe next time I'll try a Dell, or an Etch-A-Sketch.

Ethan