Debian Linux ver 4
 

Hi,

Im a newbie to Linux & my Debian server version 4 has just crashed.
I need to locate a Rescue/LIVE CD.
Please can someone point me in the right direction.

Thanks in advance,


Ricky

Hi Ricky, welcome to the forum :)

Please note that this forum is for introductions only. I have requested this thread be moved to an appropriate forum. ;)

Regards...

Debian 4 is ANCIENT...the latest is 8.5. If your system is that old, I'd certainly update to the latest version, and reload your data from backups. And did you try looking up Debian's website????
https://www.debian.org/CD/http-ftp/#stable

Is there a reason you couldn't answer the OP's question also, rather than just chiding them for posting in the wrong forum, and reporting the thread?

Hi,

The problem is that we do not have a backup & these were intentionally deleted. We need the data urgently & I am trying a few rescue disks with no luck.
I was told if I get hold of a Debian rescue disk then I will be able to recover the system.

tx
Ricky

Hi...

Yes, for the same reason we talked about before. All posts in this forum are to be introductions only. ;)

Regards...

Don't know who told you that....if your hard drive has died, there is no magic bullet that will bring it back to life, short of sending it off to a data-recovery company who only *MIGHT* be able to do something with it, for a fairly large bag of money. What, exactly, is the issue you're having/seeing?

If this is a critical system, I don't understand why you INTENTIONALLY DELETED the backups.

Yes...and see this from before as well:
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...7/#post5551146

You are NOT a moderator, anymore than I am. There is no 'rule' saying you CANNOT answer a question in this forum. The only thing you did was acknowledge you saw a question, and purposely didn't answer it, and chided the user for not posting in the right place. Again, split hairs all you'd like..this is NOT a 'rule', and intentionally not answering someone who comes here looking for help is flat out rude.

Have questions about the rules/stickies? Email the moderators/Jeremy, and ask. Get their thoughts on this kind of response, and feel free to post them afterwards.

When you say crashed, what exactly happened?
You say that you tried a few rescue disks. Which ones, what did you do with them, and what happened?

We really do need more information! Recovering data can be a difficult job and it's very easy to rush in and do something that makes the situation even worse than it was (been there, done that).

Debian 4 (Etch) reached the end of its life 15th February 2010 and has received no security updates since then. SIX yeas ago.

Rescue disks here >>> https://livecdlist.com/purpose/rescue/

Maybe if you tell us what is happened when you attempted to boot, it would be better. For instance, if your hard drive is failing, then I advise you NOT to attempt a rescue until you have imaged the drive. If you're not even getting past POST (the beep you hear when you power the machine on), then a rescue disc is not going to help.

Don't do anything with the hard drive yet, but do tell us more so we can better help.

Hi,

Apologies for the late response, time difference issues...okay so here is the history of events:-

1. We had bad sector blocks on the hard drive which we subsequently repaired, we accesses the machine perfectly at this point
2. We then, tried to do a backup but the server would not respond. we needed to copy & export some of the data for our auditors but it didnt work.
3. My colleague suggested a reboot & that's when all hell broke loose, this is the error that we are getting:

EXT#-fs: mounted filestsem with ordered data mode
exec: 432 : chroot : not found.
Kernel panic

This is where the server hangs....

I am using TestDisk Data Recovery Utility & I can see the all the filesystems but we depserately need the server up & running, as I mentioned the backups were deleted due to internal sabotage.

Please assist, I would be eternally grateful to this forum.

Kind regards,
Ricky

You say you repaired the hard drive, and had perfect access to the machine....so it's hard to say why you couldn't copy files off the system at that point, if everything was running perfectly. How did you repair it??? The error you're getting at boot-time indicates a disk problem, with either a corrupted file system, or a dead hard-drive. I *THINK* (note: I do not KNOW), that this points to a file system corruption. Boot from CD/DVD, and enter rescue mode. When you get to the # prompt, enter:
Note again: I'm *GUESSING* on ext2, given it's Debian 4. If it complains, try ext3. Replace the <device> with whatever the hard drive is, such as /dev/hda1 or /dev/sda1.

You just said the backups were intentionally deleted....you didn't mention sabotage.

If you can see the file systems from the rescue disk, then you can back the files up using it. Get them backed up before running fsck.

When you have your data back, you need to think about the disk. Do you have smart enabled and smartd running? If you've had bad sectors appearing, then you need to (1) keep a close eye on the disk and (2) think about replacement.

As soon as bad sectors start appearing on the disk, it's in its death spiral. As soon as you saw that you should have IMMEDIATELY made a full backup if you didn't have one already. Continuing the use the drive in that state is a terrible mistake, the problem will only get worse, and as soon as you lose part of the boot system or core OS the system is borked (it seems this is the state your system is in now).

At this point you have to replace the drive, and since the old one is already losing data you can't do a straight clone. You'll need to buy a fresh drive, install the OS from scratch, and try to salvage what data and configuration files you can from the old drive before it goes completely dead. For now, you need to POWER OFF the system, that drive is going to get worse by the day. Wait until you have a system ready to pull the data off of it before you power up that drive again if you want the best chance of recovering the data on it.