[SOLVED] Fedora keeps crashing after adjusting partition with GParted

bfzhou · 02-13-2015, 12:53 PM

Hello,

last weekend, I used GParted to extent the Fedora partition, by shrinking the unallocated space and then increasing the partition.

Afterward, the system still comes up, but whenever I start the Firefox, or access a few directory from the file folder, it crashes.

This was the first time I touched unallocated space. Rearranging existing partitions between Hackingtosh and Fedora partitions before all ran without any issue.

So it seems adjusting unallocated space is a sensitive undertaking.

It has Fedora 17-64bit, is a ThinkPad T60P with 4GB. I wonder if I should just install Fedora 20, but don't want to lose my data.

Is there a safe way bring the system back to healthy state?

Thanks for sharing any insight!

rknichols · 02-13-2015, 01:03 PM

Exactly what did you "shrink"? In Gparted, you don't explicitly shrink unallocated space. You just use it. So, there was apparently something there to shrink. What was it? It sounds link you've chopped off part of some filesystem.

bfzhou · 02-13-2015, 03:20 PM

[QUOTE=rknichols;5316668]Exactly what did you "shrink"? In Gparted, you don't explicitly shrink unallocated space.QUOTE]

Yes, that's what I thought before too. But for some reason, it didn't let me expand the Linux partition until I select the unallocated section, the resize/move button became available. So I did it. But now, I can no longer resize the unallocated space, though the partition are available for resizing/moving.

Something wasn't right it seems. But the files are all visible, just the system freezes after a short while, or just reboots itself.

I wonder what option I have now short of reinstalling Fedora which may wipe out all my files?

rknichols · 02-13-2015, 03:45 PM

Please post the output from "fdisk -lu" on the drive so that I can get some idea of what might have happened. Please wrap that output in [CODE] ... [/CODE] tags to preserve formatting.

bfzhou · 02-13-2015, 04:12 PM

it is a kind of strange, /dev/sdb3, the Linux partition together with the unallocated space, used to be part of the extended partition. But now it got separated away from it. /dev/sdb1 contains Mac OS Snow Leopard.

Code:

Disk /dev/sda: 80.0 GB, 80026361856 bytes
240 heads, 63 sectors/track, 10337 cylinders, total 156301488 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x1ca927d0

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *          63    63821519    31910728+   7  HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sda2        63821520   156295439    46236960    f  W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sda5        63821583    94862879    15520648+   7  HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sda6        94862943   156295439    30716248+   7  HPFS/NTFS/exFAT

Disk /dev/sdb: 250.1 GB, 250059350016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 30401 cylinders, total 488397168 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x000e9500

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdb1              63    97947990    48973964   af  HFS / HFS+
/dev/sdb2   *    97949696    98977791      514048   83  Linux
/dev/sdb3        98977792   283516927    92269568   83  Linux
/dev/sdb4       471033856   487819263     8392704    5  Extended
/dev/sdb5       471035904   487819263     8391680   82  Linux swap / Solaris

rknichols · 02-13-2015, 04:47 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by bfzhou

it is a kind of strange, /dev/sdb3, the Linux partition together with the unallocated space, used to be part of the extended partition. But now it got separated away from it. /dev/sdb1 contains Mac OS Snow Leopard.

If you have any listing of what the partitioning of sdb was previously, or even just the previous size of that filesystem, it would help. That sort of mixup is going to require a serious recovery effort, if it's even possible. That should begin with making a complete image of that drive on another drive of at least 250GB capacity. If recovery goes wrong, it's easy to ruin your chances of successfully pulling files out of the present filesystem. Frankly, I'm not optimistic. It looks like your expansion effort moved back the beginning of the filesystem rather than extending the tail, and that can be impossible to undo.

The alternative to that is to recover whatever personal files you can from the existing filesystem, and then reformat and reinstall

bfzhou · 02-13-2015, 05:33 PM

Thanks so much.

I'll move that disk to my other fedora laptop and save the files then do a new installation.

Will report back .

syg00 · 02-13-2015, 08:03 PM

Did you use gparted from a running Fedora system ?. Better to use the liveCD.

bfzhou · 02-24-2015, 09:36 AM

Yes, I used a GParted Live image written to a USB stick.

I managed to mount the damaged partition to my other Linux PC and save all important files. After that, I did a fresh install of Fedora 21 and restored all the files to their original folders.

thanks much for the advice!