Help, hard drive problem - no Linux partitions found. - openSUSE Users

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Help, hard drive problem - no Linux partitions found.

Richard Mixon (qwest)

31 Dec 2004 31 Dec '04

04:20

Would appreciate any ideas before I bite the bullet and have to reinstall. I have a box I was using to setup mythtv using SuSE Pro 9.2. Its an Athlon XP 1500 with a WD 200GB drive, 512MB RAM. I had partitioned it with a 100mb "/boot", 512MB swap and the rest as an LVM storage group, which I then divided up into "/", "/var", "/cache" and "/mythtv". The only unorthodox thing I did (and I say that only in hindsight) was use the partition editor to change my "/mythtv" partition from Reiser to XFS while the partition was mounted. I had read that was much larger for large file. When I rebooted no I got a screen fully of numbers (TTY1, TTY2, ....) and no root partition found. I used CD #1 and asked it to automatically repair the system. It says it cannot find any partitions with Linux installed - of course I've had it rescan multiple times. The partition editor still shows all partitions as they should be. What should I do next? Thanks in advance - Richard

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Greg Freemyer

31 Dec 31 Dec

20:42

New subject: [SLE] Help, hard drive problem - no Linux partitions found.

On Thu, 30 Dec 2004 21:20:42 -0700, Richard Mixon (qwest) wrote:

...

Would appreciate any ideas before I bite the bullet and have to reinstall.

I have a box I was using to setup mythtv using SuSE Pro 9.2. Its an Athlon XP 1500 with a WD 200GB drive, 512MB RAM.

I had partitioned it with a 100mb "/boot", 512MB swap and the rest as an LVM storage group, which I then divided up into "/", "/var", "/cache" and "/mythtv".

The only unorthodox thing I did (and I say that only in hindsight) was use the partition editor to change my "/mythtv" partition from Reiser to XFS while the partition was mounted. I had read that was much larger for large file. When I rebooted no I got a screen fully of numbers (TTY1, TTY2, ....) and no root partition found.

I used CD #1 and asked it to automatically repair the system. It says it cannot find any partitions with Linux installed - of course I've had it rescan multiple times. The partition editor still shows all partitions as they should be.

What should I do next?

Thanks in advance - Richard

Richard, I don't have any answers for you, but are you sure your IDE controller is compatible with a 200 GB drive? Anytime I see one bigger than 137GB I get nervous. Just a few days ago a co-worker of mine put a 250GB drive full of valid data on 2-yr old Intel Motherboard. (He was running Win2K) The drive seemed to work and he could see the directory structure etc., but he was having file corruption issues. We tracked his problem down to non-compatible IDE controller on the motherboard. Unfortunately some of the data was corrupt by that point. (Yes, we had it on tape, but that delayed us a day to restore such a big drive.) As I understand it, all ATA/133 controllers support large disk drives, and apparently some ATA/100 controllers do as well. Unfortunately, the only way I know to really verify a controller is large drive capable is to write out over 137 GB of data with known md5 checksums, then verify the checksums. If someone knows an easier way, I would like to hear it. Or if Linux is better than Win2K about simply not attempting to access parts of the disk drive beyond the capability of the controller, I would like to know that as well. Greg -- Greg Freemyer

Richard Mixon (qwest)

21:48

New subject: [SLE] Help, hard drive problem - no Linux partitions found.

Greg Freemyer wrote:

...

On Thu, 30 Dec 2004 21:20:42 -0700, Richard Mixon (qwest) wrote:

...
Would appreciate any ideas before I bite the bullet and have to reinstall.

I have a box I was using to setup mythtv using SuSE Pro 9.2. Its an <SNIP> What should I do next?

Thanks in advance - Richard

Richard,

I don't have any answers for you, but are you sure your IDE controller is compatible with a 200 GB drive?

Anytime I see one bigger than 137GB I get nervous. <SNIP> Or if Linux is better than Win2K about simply not attempting to access parts of the disk drive beyond the capability of the controller, I would like to know that as well.

Greg, Thanks for the idea. However in this case, I'm using the controller that Western Digital bundled with the drive (a Promise 1 port ATA/133 I believe). - Richard

John Lamb

21:14

New subject: [SLE] Help, hard drive problem - no Linux partitions found.

Richard Mixon (qwest) wrote:

...

I used CD #1 and asked it to automatically repair the system. It says it cannot find any partitions with Linux installed - of course I've had it rescan multiple times. The partition editor still shows all partitions as they should be.

What should I do next?

I would try booting from CD to a minimal system and then try mounting partitions one by one. If you can rescue data do it. If you can'n mount, maybe try using fdisk (at your own risk!) on the disk to see what partition types it thinks it has. -- JDL

Richard Mixon (qwest)

21:49

New subject: [SLE] Help, hard drive problem - no Linux partitions found.

John Lamb wrote:

...

Richard Mixon (qwest) wrote:

...
I used CD #1 and asked it to automatically repair the system. It says it cannot find any partitions with Linux installed - of course I've had it rescan multiple times. The partition editor still shows all partitions as they should be.

What should I do next?

I would try booting from CD to a minimal system and then try mounting partitions one by one. If you can rescue data do it. If you can'n mount, maybe try using fdisk (at your own risk!) on the disk to see what partition types it thinks it has.

John, Thanks. I used the Rescue option this morning, but was unable to mount anything but /dev/hde1 (my "/boot")partition. I finally just bit the bullet and an re-installing now. I was not that far along in my MythTV install, and had learned a good bit by then. Re-installing may end up with better results anyway. However I decided to keep "/" on a separate physical 12GB partition this time. I'll put the video files on XFS under LVM so it can be expanded. At least I should be able to boot in the future. - Richard

Carlos E. R.

3 Jan 3 Jan

03:16

New subject: [SLE] Help, hard drive problem - no Linux partitions found.

The Thursday 2004-12-30 at 21:20 -0700, Richard Mixon (qwest) wrote:

...

I had partitioned it with a 100mb "/boot", 512MB swap and the rest as an LVM storage group, which I then divided up into "/", "/var", "/cache" and "/mythtv".

The only unorthodox thing I did (and I say that only in hindsight) was use the partition editor to change my "/mythtv" partition from Reiser to XFS while the partition was mounted. I had read that was much larger for large file. When I rebooted no I got a screen fully of numbers (TTY1, TTY2, ....) and no root partition found.

I'm not familiar with LVM, but you can not reformat a mounted partition. I'm very surprised that yast allowed it. And, if you did succeed, I think the filesystem could be completely gaga. And it was... so that could be the reason. -- Cheers, Carlos Robinson

Terence McCarthy

21:45

New subject: [SLE] Help, hard drive problem - no Linux partitions found.

On Mon, 3 Jan 2005 04:16:44 +0100 (CET) "Carlos E. R." wrote:

...

The Thursday 2004-12-30 at 21:20 -0700, Richard Mixon (qwest) wrote:

...
I had partitioned it with a 100mb "/boot", 512MB swap and the rest as an LVM storage group, which I then divided up into "/", "/var", "/cache" and "/mythtv".

The only unorthodox thing I did (and I say that only in hindsight) was use the partition editor to change my "/mythtv" partition from Reiser to XFS while the partition was mounted. I had read that was much larger for large file. When I rebooted no I got a screen fully of numbers (TTY1, TTY2, ....) and no root partition found.

I'm not familiar with LVM, but you can not reformat a mounted partition. I'm very surprised that yast allowed it. And, if you did succeed, I think the filesystem could be completely gaga. And it was... so that could be the reason.

I'm also unfamiliar with LVM, but you might try Knoppix to see what you may be able to salvage. I don't think you can hope to mount an LVM (which, I thought, and I've not checked before writing this, requires all parts to be the same file system), where a significant part is corrupted. HTH Terence

Richard Bos

22:06

New subject: [SLE] Help, hard drive problem - no Linux partitions found.

Op maandag 3 januari 2005 22:45, schreef Terence McCarthy:

...

I'm also unfamiliar with LVM, but you might try Knoppix to see what you may be able to salvage. I don't think you can hope to mount an LVM (which, I thought, and I've not checked before writing this, requires all parts to be the same file system), where a significant part is corrupted.

Won't work as knoppix comes with lvm-1 while suse-9.2 uses lvm-2... -- Richard Bos Without a home the journey is endless

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participants (6)

Carlos E. R.
Greg Freemyer
John Lamb
Richard Bos
Richard Mixon (qwest)
Terence McCarthy