Re: Help! Can't recover!

["Adam C. Powell, IV" <adam powell nist gov>]

geerten kuiper wrote:

> At 00:40 14/01/99 -0500, Jonathan Vafai wrote:
> >Is someone adding this to the FAQ?
> >
> I would, but I'm not quite sure what to add regarding this thread. There's
> a number of ways to boot a machine after a file system is broken. None of
> them is specific to Alpha.

To summarize this thread, I sent the following to xeno@clark.net:

1) My disk has crashed, and there are errors somewhere outside the root
partition that are preventing me from logging in as superuser to service the
disk.  How can I just get a shell?

Solution: boot from ARC/SRM/AlphaBIOS with the final option
init=/bin/bash e.g.
boot hda2:vmlinux.gz root=/dev/hda2 init=/bin/bash

Real solution: Avoid this by keeping root login from depending on files
outside the root partition!  (E.g. don't use tcsh, don't start X in .login,
etc.)

However, see problem 2...

2) The boot variable init doesn't seem to work properly with recent 2.1 or
2.2-pre kernels.  The kernel freezes after "Freeing unused kernel memory...
48k freed"

Solution: Indeed, with development kernels, my MILO/kernel combination does
not seem to work with this option.  However, the 2.0 kernels still work, so
if you still have one in your root directory, boot with that and with
init=/bin/bash (or whatever).

3) My disk has crashed, and the root partition has damage.  How can I do disk
maintenance?

Solution for RedHat users: start the installer from the boot disk and
ramdisk.  Proceed until it asks whether you want to install or upgrade, and
answer upgrade.  After that, hit 'Alt-F2' and you will be at the ash shell
prompt.  A few tools will be present, including mount and e2fsck, however
mount only accepts the -t option.  To use e2fsck, therefore, you have to do
"mount -t ext2 hda2 /mnt ; umount /mnt".  This action will create /tmp/hda2
which you use with e2fsck.

Any errors?

Zeen,

-Adam `Cold Fusion' Powell, IV http://www.ctcms.nist.gov/~powell/ ____
USDoC, National Institute of Standards & Technology (NIST)  |\ ||<  |
Center for Theoretical and Computational Materials Science  | \||_> |