RE: System crashed while using parted

[Michael Wendell]

Andrew,
        Sorry to bother you again, but I have more pertinent information for 
you.
I was able to successfully run efsck on my partition that is lost.  I was
even able to copy some (not all, ran out of disk space) to a root working
directory, in raw form.

# cp /dev/hda5 /root/working

I made sure that /dev/hda5 is unmounted, so as not to make any further
changes to it.
When I issued the cp command above, the boot sequence started up again, and
after receiving several errors, it spit me out to the localhost login
prompt, but would not allow me to login as root, or even offer me a chance
to give the root password...is this relevant to the /usr directory being
corrupted? I have a HOWTO I printed out from
        http://www.linux.com/howto/mini/Ext2fs-Undeletion-4.html
As to how to recover a file, but it requires the fsgrab utility which we do
not have in our bareboned command list (recovery mode) Is there a simpler
way to go about this process? Any help is GREATly appreciated, once
again...sorry to bother you.
Thanks,
        Mike
Michael J. Wendell
Binghamton Simulator Company
151 Court Street
Binghamton, NY 13901
607-722-6178 x369
address@hidden

-----Original Message-----
From: address@hidden [mailto:address@hidden Behalf Of Andrew Clausen
Sent: Tuesday, May 29, 2001 8:52 PM
To: Michael Wendell
Cc: address@hidden
Subject: Re: System crashed while using parted


Michael Wendell wrote:
> Hello,
>     I was attempting to use parted version 1.4.13 to copy
> partitions on an existing hard disk to an additional
> attached hard disk.  However, I had a couple of other
> windows opened.  I had gnome running and was attempting to
> copy while running this as well as a few other
> applications.  I am assuming this was a poor way to go
> about things, since the machine locked up entirely and the
> only way I could clear out was by rebooting manually
> (resetting the machine).

I have also found problems with X and heavy IO.  I should upgrade
to a newer X, and see if it persists.  I suspect it's an X issue,
anyway.

>  Now at every boot of Red Hat 7.0
> 2.2.16.ert, the machine locks up and fails its self test on
> /dev/hda7, which is a linux partition on the drive I was
> attempting to copy from.  This machine has vital
> information on it and I need to get this hard drive copied
> in its entirety in order to have a backup of this OS for a
> very crucial job here at work.

Ouch.  What do you mean, "fails it's self test"?
Can you run e2fsck on it?  Anyway, copying *from* a partition
in parted shouldn't do any damage...

Was the partition mounted?  Maybe there are cache issues...

>     On another note, what would be a best bet suggestion to
> accomplish this? Is parted the right program to be using?

I would use tar or some backup program.

> I
> am rather new to Linux and I have read pages upon pages of
> How-To's, but nothing seems to come closer than Parted.
> Will parted successfully copy the boot sector so I can use
> my copy to run a system standalone without the Mother hard
> disk?

Perhaps partimage.sourceforge.net is what you want...
I don't think it does partition tables / MBR though.
(you can do that with dd, though:
        # dd if=/dev/hda of=mbr.backup bs=512 count=1
)

If you want to backup "then entire disk", you can use dd
to copy.  Eg: if you have a spare hard disk:

        # dd if=/dev/hda of=/dev/hdb bs=4M

(bs=4M means "copy 4Mb at a time")

If you copy all the partitions on a disk to another disk
with Parted, it won't be bootable.  However, it is easy
to make it bootable, by booting off a floppy (say, the
parted boot floppy, or your distro install CD), and doing:

        # chroot /dev/hda[INSERT-ROOT-DEV-NUM] /sbin/lilo

Andrew Clausen