need ***EXPERT*** REISERFS hard disk help!

synaptical · 06-26-2005, 09:50 AM

i'm not even going to attempt doing anything myself until i hear from the experts on this!

what happened is that i had one lone windows machine with a 160gb drive that i decided to retire. i was just using it as a file server, so it was on most of the time for not much work. i took the drive out and slaved it in my main computer. i set up NFS and everything was okay, but the permissions were weird from the FAT partitions. it couldn't change ownership from root:root, etc., and it also had 10GB of wasted space from where the windows partition was. so i started moving as much data off the drive as i could onto my 80gb, and then the rest of it around to different partitions so i could repartition it and set up linux filesystems.

i was almost done, but on the last cfdisk something went wrong. as it stands now, i have hdb1, 2, &3, and all the remaining data is on hdb1. all the partitions are reiserfs. without thinking i toggled boot on hdb1 because i got that "can't boot this disk" message, then realized i didn't need to boot anything and that it was just for windows, so i toggled it off again. i never wrote anything with boot toggled, but now i can't mount hdb1 to access the data. here are the errors i'm getting:

Code:

[10] root:/mnt/seagate # mount -t reiserfs /dev/hdb1 hdb1/
mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/hdb1,
       missing codepage or other error
       In some cases useful info is found in syslog - try
       dmesg | tail  or so

[11] root:/mnt/seagate # dmesg | tail
attempt to access beyond end of device
hdb1: rw=0, want=104595464, limit=78140097
attempt to access beyond end of device
hdb1: rw=0, want=104857608, limit=78140097
attempt to access beyond end of device
hdb1: rw=0, want=105119752, limit=78140097
attempt to access beyond end of device
hdb1: rw=0, want=105381896, limit=78140097
ReiserFS: hdb1: warning: sh-2029: reiserfs read_bitmaps: bitmap block (#9797632) reading failed
ReiserFS: hdb1: warning: jmacd-8: reiserfs_fill_super: unable to read bitmap

are there reiserfs tools i can run to be able to read the disk again? as i said, in this case i don't want to mess with anything or start "experimenting" until i get some experienced advice on what to do. i have 40GB of music and movies on that partition that i would seriously hate to lose, some of the music is backed up, but not any of the movies.

i also wonder if setting up a distro on some of the spare space would re-read any partition information, MBR, etc. during setup and allow me to access the partition. any help anyone can give me would be great. i really can't lose that data!!

synaptical · 06-26-2005, 12:57 PM

i did a dd to a partition on my other drive, all the directories are there, but i get a permission denied for all the files and some of the directories:

Code:

[21] root:~ # cd /mnt/media

[22] root:/mnt/media # ls
dvd/  laptop/  movies/  mp3/  rips/

[23] root:/mnt/media # cd mp3

[24] root:/mnt/media/mp3 # ls
ls: rips: Permission denied
ls: vol1: Permission denied
ls: vol2: Permission denied
ls: realbooks: Permission denied

[25] root:/mnt/media/mp3 # cd vol1 
bash: cd: vol1: Permission denied

[26] root:/mnt/media/mp3 # cd ../laptop/

[27] root:/mnt/media/laptop # ls
d_drive/  slack_home/

[28] root:/mnt/media/laptop # cd slack_home/

[29] root:/mnt/media/laptop/slack_home # ls
jeff/

[30] root:/mnt/media/laptop/slack_home # cd jeff/

[31] root:/mnt/media/laptop/slack_home/jeff # ls
ls: text: Permission denied
ls: switch.scr: Permission denied
ls: dload: Permission denied
ls: graphics: Permission denied
ls: Desktop: Permission denied
ls: config: Permission denied
ls: switch.scr.orig: Permission denied
ls: kernel: Permission denied
ls: top.tail: Permission denied
ls: programs: Permission denied

[32] root:/mnt/media/laptop/slack_home/jeff # cd /mnt/media

[33] root:/mnt/media # ll
total 2
drwxr-xr-x   4 root root  496 Jun 25 20:24 dvd/
drwxr-xr-x   4 root root   104 Jun 25 20:29 laptop/
drwxr-xr-x   2 root root  1432 Jun 25 20:53 movies/
drwxr-xr-x   6 root root   152 Jun 25 20:59 mp3/
drwxr-xr-x   2 root root   48 Jun 25 20:59 rips/

i just had another horrible thought: dumping the data didn't remove it from hdb1, did it? it's still there in the original form, right?

>>edit: i should have just edited the original post to maintain 0 response status. anyway, here is an update:

i ran reiserfs --check on the partition i copied to, which recommended running --rebuild-tree. that recovered about 1/2 the data, mostly the stuff i already had backed up, though.

however, the destination partition was slightly bigger than the source, so now i'm trying the dd again on another partition i made on hdb of the exact same size as the source partition. i'm not sure that will matter, but maybe it will help get back some more of the data. it might just be corrupted beyond recovery, though, wtf. any other suggestions welcomed.

otchie1 · 06-26-2005, 04:00 PM

no expert advice i'm afraid just a bit of wisdom. format the lot and start again...i mean, when was the last time you actually watched any of that stuff anyway?