Partition problem?
 

I have messed up and hopefully someone here can help before I really destroy things.

Yesterday, I installed a scsi hard drive and adapter board. Things seemed to go well. I went in to Yast and partitioned the drive. While there, I also changed the partitions on one of the other IDE drives - without first unmounting it. Everything still seemed fine while the system was operating. However, when I tried to boot the machine today, It switched over to showing me the details of the boot process and then just gave me a login prompt at the bottom of the screen. (this is the bash shell, right?) It didn't go into the Gnome desktop login. The details scrolling by on the screen mentioned problems with the file system.

So, I logged in as root and was able to get to Yast. My intention was to try to put the partition info for all the drives back the way it had been before my changes. However, The partitioning tool only showed one hard drive with it's partitions. There should be 3 IDE drives and the new scsi drive.

How do I restore my system without losing information? As I dig around, it appears that all the files and directories that were there before are still available - even on different drives.

I have no system backup. That was next on the "to do" list after getting the new hard drive installed to give me space for a backup.

I am running SUSE ver 10. The system has been running for several months. I have been trying to learn my way around Linux, but have not spent much time outside the desktop GUI environment yet. I have installed extra software packages from various sources and have been using this machine to do some website development, so there are a good number of files on the machine that I would rather not lose.

What do I do? :scratch:

First, write a shorter description of the issue....

Seriously, help us understand the current state: What are all the drives and partitions on the system and where are they mounted? Post the output of these commands:

fdisk -l (ell)
cat /etc/fstab

Beyond that, don't do anything to the disk that might erase data----data that appears to be gone is recoverable (most of the time)

Yes, I was verbose last night (and frustrated). I wanted to give as much info as possible, but didn't really know what info to give.

After work, today, I booted the Linux machine without the scsi adapter installed and the system booted fine. It wouldn't do that last night. Everything I could see seemed fine. Then I shutdown, re-installed the scsi adapter and re-booted. The system was then messed up again just like last night and I can't get it back.

Ok, here is the info you asked for.

fdisk -l produced this info;

disk /dev/hda : 20.0GB 20020396032 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 2434 cylinders
units = cylinders of 16065 * 512= 0225200 bytes

dev boot start end blocks id system
/dev/hda1 # 1 2 16033+ 3 Linux
/dev/hda2 3 84 658665 2 Linux swap
/dev/hda3 85 2434 18876375 3 Linux


Cat /etc/fstab gave this report

/dev/hda3 / reiserfs defaults 1 1
/dev/hda1 /boot ext2 defaults 1 2
/dev/hdc2 /data1 auto nonauto, user 0 0
/dev/hda2 swap swap pri=42 0 0
/dev/hdc1 swap swap pri=42 0 0
devpts /dev/pts devpts mode=0620,gid=5 0 0
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
usbfs /proc/bus/usb usbfs no auto 0 0
/dev/cdrom /media/cdrom subfs no auto 0 0
/dev/fd0 /media/floppy subfs no auto 0 0
none /subdomain subdomainfs no auto 0 0
/dev/sda3 /backups reiserfs acl,user_xattr 1 2
/dev/hdd1 /data2 reiserfs acl,user_xattr 1 2
/dev/sda2 /myweb reiserfs defaults 1 2
/dev/sda1 swap swap defaults 0 0


also, the error messages on the screen during bootup run along these themes

failed to open /dev/sda3
failed to open /dev/hdd1

warning.... fsck, reiserfs for /dev/sda3 exited with signal 6

then it tells me to make repairs manually and reboot.

The fact that the system booted after 18 hrs of rest and the scsi board not installed makes me think there may be an intermittent problem with that board. I don't know why there has to be such a long waiting time, though.

I hope this info helps. There's a lot here, but you asked for it this time.

One other thing, since that last post. I booted into the rescue system with the SUSE installation CD. That also put me into text mode. Logged in as root, I repeated the fdisk -l command and it showed the partition data for all 3 IDE drives as it should. That is as far as I went.

The scsi adapter is currently uninstalled. I want to get the system back to normal, then tackle troubleshooting that thing.

OK--so you now can get into the machine? (or only with the rescue disk?)

You say you can now see 3 ide drives...Your fstab shows hda hdc and hdd (where's hdb?)

In your fstab, is sda related to the SCSI you were trying to install---or something else?

I don't know where hdb went. It hasn't been there almost as long as I have had Linux running. I thought it odd, but everything seemed to be working even though Linux skipped a letter in drive designations. The only plausible explanation I have for that is that the second drive on my primary IDE controller is actually the cdrom drive. I know that makes a difference in Windows, but I thought Linux ignored that since it designates the cdrom differently.

SDA listed in my fstab is indeed the scsi drive I connected.

Other than the missing hdb, the only thing I don't understand in my fstab list is the
"none /subdomain subdomainfs no auto 0 0" line. But could that refer to the apache webserver stuff I started playing with?

Anyhow, Booted the machine before work this morning and it still had the problem. Same result after work tonight.

Don't worry about hdb - your "plausible explanation" is close enough. The names don't "collapse down" as drives are removed.
Quick google makes it look like (Novell) APPamor is responsible for the extra fstab entry.

I'd be looking at seating/IRQ issues with that board.
Or just toss it out altogether.