System suddenly unbootable

Message

arktis · #1 Post by **arktis** » 2006-11-11 10:08

About 20 minutes ago, my debian install just totally crapped out on me. I have absolutely no idea why, and I need some help in determining exactly what happened.

Here's what I remember:

Suddenly I was unable to open nautilus. The error I got said something to the tune of: due to an error with bonobo, /home (or whatever) could not be mounted (or accessed, or something like that). I couldn't open synaptic either. At this point I can tell you it had nothing to do with an update because I hadn't updated in at least 24 hours and had been using the system for about 2 hours prior to the failure. Something that might be helpful to note is that the system uptime at that point was around 3-4 days.

So anyways, I opted for a reboot, and got a buttload of error messages about not being able to do this or that because /path/to/whatever couldn't be accessed. Eventually, the system reboots to grub and I selected my debian install from the list, figuring maybe everything will be okay this time. Nope. Same thing. So now the system is unbootable, and I have absolutely no idea why.

I can provide additional information if needed; any help would be GREATLY appreciated.

Lavene · #2 Post by **Lavene** » 2006-11-11 12:12

Sounds terribly like a trashed harddisk. You don't happen to have a LiveCD like Knoppix or something laying around? Or just the Debian install CD? Something to boot off so you can have a look at your file system...

Tina

dezza · #3 Post by **dezza** » 2006-11-11 12:15

Like Lavene said it may be your harddrive, but have you heard strange noises from your hd? Or have the linux kernel said anything about it? Can you give us your dmesg and the other boot logs?

Can you remember the last 5 or 10 things you did in your last session?

arktis · #4 Post by **arktis** » 2006-11-11 12:38

Thanks for your replies. Sorry for the following long post.

**deep breath**

I have a couple reasons to doubt the "trashed harddisk" drive scenario, being that:

a.) there have been no strange noises to indicate hard drive failure

b.) my windows partition on the very same disk drive is working just fine right this moment; I am using my windows partition with absolutely no problems whatsoever.

c.) /home and /root are separate partitions, yet I was simultaneously unable to access either from my debian install (though a failure with /root could possibly cause both to be innacessible somehow), while /boot is of course still fine since grub remains functioning as normal.

I actually believe at this point that it is possible for my install to have been somehow maliciously compromised and some specific files corrupted/destroyed for the sole purpose of crippling my system. I have not yet confirmed this and of course it may be a hard drive problem as suggested (or perhaps something just "snapped" on it's own due to an uncommon bug), and so I am basicly leaving the debian install undisturbed until I can determine exactly what went wrong.

If either possibility exists, then I have all the more reason to be certain before doing anything else.

I do have a couple installation discs for various distros and at least one linux live cd, and I can of course make additional bootable discs as needed. So the next step (though certainly not the final one) would appear to be some sort of "health check" on the root and home partitions via a bootable rescue disk of sorts... yes, no, maybe?

I really have very little experience with such things and only a modest understanding of the basic common commands involved in navigation, package manipulation, and of course the manipulation of key system files. I would appreciate it if someone told me what the relevant files to this situation might be and I will gladly submit them for examination (I will download and use Explore2fs to browse my linux partitions and grab them). As far as dmesg goes, does it write to a file? I'm betting it would take forever to manually write the output to pen and paper, then boot back into windows, then type it all out.

Concerning the last 5-10 things I did before the error... basicly I was browsing the net with firefox, running uTorrent through cedega (the torrents were being downloaded to a separate drive; NOT the same drive as my debian install), typing out a paper in abiword, and chatting on irc. I also had firestarter running and that's about it. I didn't do anything critical to the system whatsoever. The last command I remember running was 'ifconfig', and I did that as root (because it's location isn't in the binary path for a normal user for some reason, and I never got around to making a link so that normal users could run it).

**exhale**

plugwash · #5 Post by **plugwash** » 2006-11-11 13:52

first use dd from a livecd to make complete low level images of the partitions in question to another drive, this will tell you if there is a hardware problem and (assuming there isn't a hardware problem) will provide a backup in case your recovery attempts make things worse.

then fsck all the partitions and depending on the results decide if its worth trying to fix stuff or if its time to search for any files of personal importance and then reinstall debian.

arktis · #6 Post by **arktis** » 2006-11-11 14:08

plugwash wrote:first use dd from a livecd to make complete low level images of the partitions in question to another drive, this will tell you if there is a hardware problem and (assuming there isn't a hardware problem) will provide a backup in case your recovery attempts make things worse.

then fsck all the partitions and depending on the results decide if its worth trying to fix stuff or if its time to search for any files of personal importance and then reinstall debian.

1.) dd? It looks like you're saying that's a backup tool. I don't need to create a backup. I never leave anything of any importance on /home or /root.

2.) I ran a check on /home using partition magic. It's healthy. I then ran a check on /root and partition magic says "Error #1201 Ext2 superblock contains illegal information", whatever that means. So it certainly looks like an error with the partition itself and at this point I just hope it's not something that affects the entire hard drive. So I'm gonna download and burn a rescue disk and do as you suggest with fsck and see if that gives more information or possibly repairs whatever the problem is.

Edit: Well, I ran fsck and it fixed a bunch of problems on one area of /root (superblock 8 or something like that), but then when booting it became clear that I lost some critical stuff (yes, i know you said to use dd but it just seemed wrong to backup 3+ gigs of data).

booting halts with:

Code: Select all

mount:  Mounting /sys on /root/sys failed: No such file or directory
mount:  Mounting /proc on /root/proc failed: No such file or directory

Target filesystem doesn't have /sbin/init

...

/bin/sh: can't access tty; job control turned off

And then I get an (initramfs) prompt after a short message informing me to type help for a list of commands, none of which are explained but they appear to be the general unix-style commands.

So my questions now are: Is there something I can do to regenerate the required system files and folders from there, or am I stuck reinstalling?, and What could have caused the root filesystem to get corrupted like that?

The good news is my /home is separate and I keep backups of files like xorg.conf fstab and other stuff of the like, so it's not like I'm loosing ALL of my configuration data if I have to reinstall.

dezza · #7 Post by **dezza** » 2006-11-11 23:04

Is / (root) ext2 ?

How does your fstab look like? Or what is your filesystem choices?

I think this looks like a filesystem error / harddrive error still after that Windows and everything works fine, it may be only in that sector of your harddrive where your linuxpartitions are installed remember that.