Fedora Core 6 Crashed and I need to recover important data

[GrandpaGenocide]

Ok heres the situation it gets as far as starting to load, gets past grub and loading the linux image, doesnt get to the gui. When I use the rescue iso, it says there is no OS installed. It was installed on two hard drives, I installed FC6 on a fresh hard drive, is there anyway to mount the other two hd to recover data off of them???? Help I need to do this ASAP its all work related

[dan sawyer]

Let's go stepwise.

What does sfdisk -l /dev/hdx show (where x is the drive you wish to recover)?

If that shows partitions then create entries in /mnt such as hdc1 and hdc2 and mount the partitions containing the data there.

If that does not work then the partition table is probably overwritten and you will need to recover the partitions.

- Dan

[GrandpaGenocide]

dan ok so put the drive in as a slave and mount the drive? question is how do i mount it

[GrandpaGenocide]

dan-
fdisk -l doesnt recognize the drive how would i recover the partition?

[GrandpaGenocide]

ok i have it recognized now how do i mount it so i can get the files???

[Dan]

UPDATE:

Looks like we need one of you experts to take a crack at this one. Grandpa has been trying the following to get this fixed, to no avail.

did that and told me it did not find mount point in /media/salvage so i mkdir /media/salvage -- then tells me wrong fs type bad option bad superblock on /dev/hdb1 missing codepage or other error

says to try dmesg | tail Ill send u the results in a second

Results:

[root@localhost ~]# mount /dev/hdb1
mount: mount point /media/SALVAGE does not exist
[root@localhost ~]# mkdir /media/SALVAGE
[root@localhost ~]# mount /dev/hdb1
mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/hdb1,
missing codepage or other error
In some cases useful info is found in syslog - try
dmesg | tail or so

[root@localhost ~]# dmesg | tail
device-mapper: multipath: version 1.0.4 loaded
EXT3 FS on dm-0, internal journal
kjournald starting. Commit interval 5 seconds
EXT3 FS on hda1, internal journal
EXT3-fs: mounted filesystem with ordered data mode.
Adding 786424k swap on /dev/VolGroup00/LogVol01. Priority:-1 extents:1 across:786424k
process `sysctl' is using deprecated sysctl (syscall) net.ipv6.neigh.lo.base_reachable_time; Use net.ipv6.neigh.lo.base_reachable_time_ms instead.
eth0: link up, 100Mbps, full-duplex, lpa 0x41E1
eth0: no IPv6 routers present
VFS: Can't find ext3 filesystem on dev hdb1.

Current fstab:

/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00 / ext3 defaults,usrquota,grpquota 1 1
LABEL=/boot /boot ext3 defaults 1 2
devpts /dev/pts devpts gid=5,mode=620 0 0
tmpfs /dev/shm tmpfs defaults 0 0
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
sysfs /sys sysfs defaults 0 0
/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol01 swap swap defaults 0 0
/dev/hdb1 /media/SALVAGE ext3 defaults,umask=0 0 0

Any ideas, guys?


Dan

[GrandpaGenocide]

thanks for posting the output Tangleweb, I was just going to do so myself

[dan sawyer]

what does sfdisk -l show?

[GrandpaGenocide]

[root@localhost ~]# sfdisk -l

Disk /dev/hda: 155127 cylinders, 16 heads, 63 sectors/track
Warning: The partition table looks like it was made
for C/H/S=*/255/63 (instead of 155127/16/63).
For this listing I'll assume that geometry.
Units = cylinders of 8225280 bytes, blocks of 1024 bytes, counting from 0

Device Boot Start End #cyls #blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 * 0+ 12 13- 104391 83 Linux
/dev/hda2 13 9732 9720 78075900 8e Linux LVM
/dev/hda3 0 - 0 0 0 Empty
/dev/hda4 0 - 0 0 0 Empty

Disk /dev/hdb: 38752 cylinders, 16 heads, 63 sectors/track
Warning: The partition table looks like it was made
for C/H/S=*/255/63 (instead of 38752/16/63).
For this listing I'll assume that geometry.
Units = cylinders of 8225280 bytes, blocks of 1024 bytes, counting from 0

Device Boot Start End #cyls #blocks Id System
/dev/hdb1 * 0+ 2430 2431- 19526976 8e Linux LVM
/dev/hdb2 0 - 0 0 0 Empty
/dev/hdb3 0 - 0 0 0 Empty
/dev/hdb4 0 - 0 0 0 Empty

is the result of sfdisk -l
it is a LVM arghhh ..... how do I mount this?

[dan sawyer]

I don't use LVM. Do a cat of /etc/fstab, do a df command, create a mount point in /mnt that mimics the the mount point for /dev/hda.

[GrandpaGenocide]

[root@localhost ~]# df /mnt/SALVAGE
Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/mapper/VolGroup00-LogVol00
74814864 2885784 68067372 5% /


and cat /mnt/SALVAGE
gave me a bunch of gibberish that i dont think makes a point in posting

[dan sawyer]

That was part.

Do a cat of fstab
Do df
Do an ls -a of /mnt

From that create a mount point in /mnt (this will look like the mount point for the hda drive)

Try e2fsck /dev/hdb1(this may not work, it won't hurt - it will tell you if the file system is ok)

- Dan

[GrandpaGenocide]

[root@localhost ~]# cat /etc/fstab
/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00 / ext3 defaults,usrquota,grpquota 1 1
LABEL=/boot /boot ext3 defaults 1 2
devpts /dev/pts devpts gid=5,mode=620 0 0
tmpfs /dev/shm tmpfs defaults 0 0
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
sysfs /sys sysfs defaults 0 0
/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol01 swap swap defaults 0 0
/dev/hdb1 /mnt/SALVAGE ext3 defaults 0 0 0
[root@localhost ~]# df /etc/fstab
Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/mapper/VolGroup00-LogVol00
74814864 2885960 68067196 5% /
[root@localhost ~]# ls -a /mnt
. .. SALVAGE
[root@localhost ~]# e2fsck /dev/hdb1
e2fsck 1.39 (29-May-2006)
Couldn't find ext2 superblock, trying backup blocks...
e2fsck: Bad magic number in super-block while trying to open /dev/hdb1

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:
e2fsck -b 8193 <device>

[root@localhost ~]# e2fsck -b 8193 /dev/hdb1
e2fsck 1.39 (29-May-2006)
e2fsck: Bad magic number in super-block while trying to open /dev/hdb1

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:
e2fsck -b 8193 <device>

here are the results of that

[Dan]

Dang!

It ain't looking good, grandpa. You might want to organize a burial detail. <....>

Did you have the data backed up anywhere else?


Dan

[tashirosgt]

As I understand the problem, FC6 was installed on 2 hard drives. Then, for some reason, FC6 became unable to boot. So FC6 was installed on a third hard drive and all three hard drives are now in the same computer. Is this correct?

My only contribution is to suggest this: If you installed FC6 with the usual defaults on the two hard drives then when you install FC6 on the "fresh" hard drive, don't use the defaul number for the Volume Group. Don't make it Volume Group zero since the other hard drives will also be Volume Group zero.