Re: [gentoo-user] Filesystem failure

[Willie Wong]

On Thu, Mar 22, 2007 at 08:42:35AM +0000, Penguin Lover Mick squawked:
> You may find that a --fix-fixable does the trick and you don't have to
> re-install - this usually only works if you keep your fingers crossed at the
> same time.  ;-)

I wasn't so lucky. :(

So now I am re-installing system. (Argh, I started an emerge -e system
at 4 in the morning, and I completely forgot to reset my /var/tmp to
the symlink that I usually used. This morning I woke up to see that it
stopped on the second package because I ran out of space on /var). 

> > Let me be slightly more concrete. I plan to:
> >
> > download a stage3 tar ball
> > unroll the tar ball on my ex-root partition
> > (follow the handbook)
> > chroot
> > emerge --sync
> > copy over my /etc from my backups
> > rebuild toolchain
> > mount my /var partition
> > emerge -e world
> >
> > Is there any obvious flaws in that?
>
> The obvious flaw is that if the fs corruption is caused by hardware failure
> you may be back to square one in the near future.  OTH it may just be the
> result of fs fragmentation because you keep your /usr/portage on the same
> partition as /.  I guess you can try moving your /usr into a new partition
> and see how things evolve thereafter.  Did I say make a back up?
>

Well, I hope not. I did run smartctl from the liveCD and the longtest
didn't see anything wrong with the disc. The damage was all very
localized to /. (in fact, /usr). 

It might have to do with a bump I gave the laptop: I was getting up to
use the bathroom and in bringing the laptop from my lap to the coffee
table, bumpped it on the armrest of my chair. I guess it could cause a
hardware failure, but so far I am praying it isn't. 

On the other hand, my desktop has survived several guttings due to bad
harddrives (once it was due to a flatmate who likes to slam his doors
shut... the shock travels across the plaster wall, down my desk, and
into my box), and I remember the symptoms of hardware failure to be
not so quick acting and to have given different error messages. 

As to backups, I always keep backups of the data partition. I figured
that whatever I can rebuild from the liveCD probably isn't worth the
backup. I'll see whether this experience teaches me otherwise. 

Ah... and one flaw in my plan that I discovered: my /etc configs
includes those for software I haven't yet rebuilt and those for stuff
in system that has been revised many times since 2006.1. For example,
after just copying over my backup /etc, I discovered I cannot log in.
The liveCD uses pam and I use shadow and some files were overwrote.
Good that I was logged in at another console (something I learned from
experience... that when fixing a computer never to log out completely
until you're sure you can get back in) and emerged shadow. Another
example is that portage complained about the overlays that exists in
my make.conf but not on my filesystem. 

W
-- 
If it weren't for the last minute, 
nothing would ever get done.
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