Suse Linux Enterprise Server 9.0 boot problems
 

Hi all!

First of all and as a newcomer, thanks for sharing your knowledge!

I looking for help with a Suse Linux server failing at startup with the following message:

Kernel panic: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on hda2

I've been adviced to run fsck after booting from any available LiveCD. I've done that by using Ubuntu Dapper Live CD and Suse Linux 10.1 LiveDVD and here is the output

###########
reiserfsck --check started at Wed Oct 25 18:18:35 2006
###########
Replaying journal..
Reiserfs journal '/dev/hda2' in blocks [18..8211]: 0 transactions replayed
Checking internal tree../ 1 (of 3)/ 6 (of 137)/ 37 (of 128)bad_leaf: block 5079206, items 11 and 12: The wrong order of items: [14 81775 0x0 SD (0)], [14 81775 0x81000000000001 DRCT (2)]
finished
Comparing bitmaps..finished
Fatal corruptions were found, Semantic pass skipped
1 found corruptions can be fixed only when running with --rebuild-tree
###########
reiserfsck finished at Wed Oct 25 18:19:51 2006
###########

Thus, I run reiserfsk --rebuild-tree /dev/hda2 but the system freeze at every attempt. The same result by using any of both distros (Ubuntu Dapper and Suse 10.1).

Both marked 6734304 blocks used, start working and freeze at the very beggining of the process, always araund 6600000, but now always at the same block.

I only regain access to the box by hard-rebooting it.

Please, could you help me with this issue? Am I toasted? Is it any option to recover this boot disk, thus the data it stores?

Thanks!

Best,

Ricardo

Data recovery
 

I can't help you make the disk boot and work again but if you want to get the data of the disk I sujest you remove the disk place it in a external usb caseing and use either of those live cds to boot some other computer with the usb disk attached. You could probebly even use a windows system or any other system which automatically mounts usb disk. This should give some access to the files on the disk at least the ones that are not corrupted.

It could just be that you might need to delete the corrupted file, ie a confiuration file and recreate it in the same directroy with the correct set up info in it. Some systems might automatically create cirtain files. As you dont have enough access to the disk to be able to tell say what the actuall problem is these are just some things you could look at trying.

I have personally recovered data of drives that did not boot buy pluging them into an exteranl usb hard drive caseing.

Thanks for the input!

Just a doubt: why USB? Why not simply change the boot to the secondary IDE bus? Could I mount the its partitions in such a location if boot the box with a LiveCD? Even more, if I leave the troubled disk as boot one and boot from a LiveCD, could I mount the partitions one the system is up and running?


I've not an available USB box, but it is not big deal to move the disk to the secondary IDE bus.

I've already tried to do that, but I don't know how to mount the partition.

Again, thanks for your help,

Ricardo