http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...postid=1870003

I'm having this exact problem, but I don't know what to do. Well not that exact problem, but something similar.

My failed bootup looks like this:

Start udev - OK
Activating swap partitions: swapon: /dev/hda7: Invalid argument - FAILED

Checking filesystems
fsck.ext3/dev/hda9:
The superblock could not be read or does not describe a correct ext2 filesystem. If the device is valid and it really contains an ext2 filesystem (and not swap or ufs or something else), then the superblock is corrupt, and you might try running e2fsck with an alternate superblock:
e2fck -b 8193 <device>

: Bad magic number in super-block while trying to open /dev/hda9
/dev/hda8: clean, 1381/4071648 files, 212918/8132898 blocks
Failed to check filesystem. Do you want to repair the errors? (Y/N)
(beware, you can lose data)

When I say Yes to this, it says:

e2fsck 1.36 (05-Feb-2005)
Couldn't fine ext2 superblick, trying to backup blocks...
fsck.ext3
The superblock could not be read or does not describe a correct ext2 filesystem. If the device is valid and it really contains an ext2 filesystem (and not swap or ufs or something else), then the superblock is corrupt, and you might try running e2fsck with an alternate superblock:
e2fck -b 8193 <device>

: Bad magic number in super-block while trying to open /dev/hda9
e2fsck 1.36 (05-Feb-2005)
/dev/hda8: clean, 1381/4071648 files, 212918/8132898 blocks

*** An error occurred during the file system check.
*** Dropping you into a shell; the system will reboot
*** when you leave the shell.
Give root password for maintenance
(or type Control-D for normal startup):

Thank god for Linux and it's ability to drop me into a shell when it crashes!

My fstab looks like this:

# This file is edited by fstab-sync - se 'man fstab-sync' for details
/dev/hda5 / ext3 defaults 1 1
/dev/hda9 /home ext3 defaults 1 2
/dev/hdc /mnt/cdrom iso 9669 user,iocharset=iso8859-1,noauto,ro,exec 0 0
/dev/hda1 /mnt/win_c ntfs umask=0,nls=iso8859-1,ro 0 0
/dev/hdb1 /mnt/win_c2 vfat umask=0,iocharset=iso8859-1,codepage=850 0 0
/dev/hda6 /mnt/win_d vfat umask=0,iocharset=iso8859-1,codepage=850 0 0
none /proc proc defaults 0 0
/dev/hda8 /usr ext3 defaults 1 2
/dev/hda7 swap swap defaults 0 0

That's all i get when I do a "cat fstab" in the console.

So now what?

I tried to scan the drive using Maxtor's Power Blast and this drive is ok, although my 160gb drive died on me last night. This drive is brand new in August and i hope it's not failing...

Any suggestions?

Thanks in advance!

I'm going to boot with Knoppix to see if i can fsck on it. or something.... I don't know, i'm tired of formatting and installing and booting and harddrives dying... *laugh*

But I really would like some guidance as to what to do, because I've been only dealing with linux for a few weeks now...

hmm... maybe i should run fdisk to see if my partition table changed?

I'll try that, once i rescue my files, incase i have to re-format everything AGAIN

Ok, well looks like no one could help, that's ok!

Wow, i'm so lucky that the "cat" command exists, as I had to edit my fstab file from that command, I couldn't open any programs, so I did everything from the CL!

Wow, that was an adventure

I had to boot up Knoppix and check my fstab and get fdisk to list my partition table. I compared the 2 and my fstab wasn't mapping the drives properly. Knoppix wouldn't let me write to my root partition, so I had to login to Mandriva as far as I could, and I edited fstab using the cat command I learned in "Rute"

http://rute.2038bug.com/index.html.gz

This saved my ass. Thank you to all those who developed the idea of a user actually being able to fix the OS, rather than going to a "blue screen of death" and not allowing anything to happen, except for a format and re-install. Thank you!

Such a simple solution to a seemingly huge problem. I thought that this disk was trashed too, after my otherone died last night!

I really learned a lot and I'm proud that I was able to fix my OS, something that not many windows users can say!

Well, hopefully this thread(if you can call it one) will be of some help to others in my situation.