whole slew of errors with root filesystem...

That doesn't sound like fun. Hopefully, it's not a hard drive failure of some type.

Before doing anything, I'd reseat your drive cables (and controller card if it's not built into the motherboard), in case you've got a loose or bad connection somewhere (often caused by a bit of oxidation on the contacts that reseating everything may solve).

I'd make sure the BIOS has the correct drive info, too (just in case the drive info in your BIOS got corrupted somehow causing the issues).

If the drive is being recognized OK and the paritition table is just corrupted, give TestDisk a try. I don't know if you can install and run it from a MEPIS Live CD or not (it's in the repositories, though).

But, I do know that you can use a Kanotix Live CD for that purpose (you can install applications from repositories while running from the Live CD).

http://www.kanotix.com

Kano (the developer of Kanotix) has it setup well enough to do this with (apparently creating a RAM Disk for that purpose).

It could be that the partition table is corrupted, and TestDisk may be able to rebuild it (it can look for any partitions, let you recover them and specify some basic info about them).

It saved my rear recently.

While I was half asleep and experimenting with diifferent MBR types on a CompactFlash Card using Ranish Parition Manager, I removed the existing partitions on my primary hard disk drive instead, overwrote it's Master Boot Record, created a new Partition, and started formatting it before I realized that the wrong drive was selected (I didn't notice the extra decimal places in the drive size until it was too late). I've got to pay attention to those little details. Smiling

It was my primary hard disk drive with Windows XP, SimplyMEPIS, Kanotix, and lots of important files on it, versus the CompactFlash Card I was experimenting with. Big OOPS!

Well, I booted into a Linux Live CD (Kanotix), installed TestDisk, and managed to recover the NTFS partition on the drive, with no loss of data. Ditto for the Linux Partitions. I did need to recreate the MBR using fixmbr from an XP CD's Recovery Console and reinstall GRUB. But, my parititions survived my mistakes intact, thanks to TestDisk.

http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk

If you can't get the partitions back intact, you can probably get many of the files you had on them. Try PhotoRec (from the same author that developed TestDisk). It recognizes a number of different file types (including many image and doc formats). It's in the repositories for many Linux distros, too.

Jim C.

I'd boot to MEPIS CD and then save the most important files to a Flash drive or USB drive if you have (or if you have 2 CD units save important files to a CD). In my opinion your hard-disk is ready to fail so it's a good idea to save anything important. AFTERWARDS run a disk test utility (the one that comes with your computer or from MEPIS CD)

As I side remark I've seem more harddisks failing recently than in the past, I don't think they make them as good as they used to, so it's a good idea to back up important stuff from time to time.
--
Check out Mepis wiki: www.mepis.org/docs

It sounds like he can't get to them from the Live CD. Personally, I'd make sure it's not something simple like a bad connection or BIOS causing it first, and see if the partition table can be fixed using TestDisk.

Then, backup the files once I got to that point.

But, if I couldn't get to that point, I'd probably resort to PhotoRec. I've seen good results reported from users that have tried it to recover images from defective media before.

It can read the entire drive and write the files it finds to somewhere else.

Here are the file types it can recognize and try to piece together for you:

http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/File_Formats_Recovered_By_PhotoRec

Jim C.

Hmm, sorry I guess I skipped that part, if he's not able to mount the partition even as read-only from CD it's pretty bad. I doubt it's a cable issue because HD cables are pretty well fastened.

--
Check out Mepis wiki: www.mepis.org/docs

Trying what was suggested, i'm downloading the kanotix livecd now. In the meantime I ran the livecd and used the repair partitions option in Mepis Utilities.
Here's what it said:
-------
Checking/repairing filesystem (e2fsck) on /dev/hda4.
/sbin/e2fsck
:
Bad magic number in super-block

while trying to open /dev/hda4

/dev/hda4:
The
super
block
could not be read or does not describe a correct ext2

filesystem
. If the device is valid and it really contains an ext2

filesystem
(and not swap or ufs or something else), then the
super
block

is corrupt, you might try running e2fsck with an alternate
super
block
:
e2fsck -b
8193
<
device
>

Check completed.
-------

When I ran e2fsck -b 8193 /dev/hda4 i got the same output.

(btw this computer is a laptop, I haven't bumped it any so it shoudn't be a loose cable)

I had an issue somewhat like this about 3-4 months back on a customers laptop. After installing SM, and rebooting into windows, windows thought the partition was still there and tried to write to it, causing all sorts of issues.

I didn't have to contend with a unknown partition type, but it had essentially the same errors you are explaining. Boot the live cd, open mutilities and choose the repair partitions option on the left, choose your drive and partition and run the tool.

If no joy, or you see a number of errors that seem to take a long time to fix and you can hear the drive heads bouncing like a jack russel terrier, you very well may have a bad drive, if it's under warranty, get it checked out but don't stand for any of the rubbish anyone will give you for an unsupported file system.

Mike P

--------------------
Life may not be the party we thought, but while we're here, we may as well dance.
Break M$'s shackles from your feet and free yourself with Mepis

I have trued that, that's where I got the output above.

I at least I know it's not my HD conking out- I got windows to boot halfway (was having errors in that as well).

Got it december of '05, was made sometime in '04. I have had to get the HD replaced before, but that was when it was in warranty =/

I realize that this isn't going to help you at this point, but it might save somebody else from running into potential issues.

Even as long ago as the MS-DOS 4.0-5.0a days, "Never run chkdsk against a hard drive with the /F parameter!" has been the byword.

Running "chkdsk /r" on a post-xp-install, repartitioned hard drive; will subject the entire drive (all partitions) to chkdsk operations.
/p Check even if the drive is not flagged dirty, bad.
/r Locates bad sectors and recovers readable information (implies /p).

Now....did you actually use ext2 or ext3 for the filesystem on the new install, or did you use reiser or xfs? You may be able to use parted to rewrite the filesystem type, although I'd definitely give testdisk a whack at the drive first.

"You have two labs?"
"Each has its place. At the university, I try to please the Federal Government. Here, I negotiate with God."

I thought I'd remembered installing TestDisk from the Kanotix LIve CD by pulling it from the repositories. I remembered running other apps this way from a Live CD.

But, it looks like it's already on the CD (at least a 2006-01-RC4 CD I had sitting beside my desk).

So, after booting into it, just open a console, login is root by typing su (so that you'll have full access to any drives), maximize the console (it will need to be at least 24 lines long), and run testdisk:

su
testdisk

It will pull up a list of drives found that you can selet from, then show some options for finding paritions and more.

You'll need to have a basic understanding of paritions to use it.

PhotoRec is also on the Kanotix CD (at least on 2006-01-RC4). So, you can start it the same way if everything else fails and you need to try and read files and write them to another drive (PhotoRec ignores file system types).

su
photorec

You may not have much luck recorving files from a ReiserFS partition (apparently, the way it stores files makes it more difficult). But, it should work better than most utiltiies on recoving files it recognizes from other partition types.

I would not write to the drive before getting what you can from it.

Jim C.

TestDisk is saying my ext3 partition is a ReiserFS...is there any way I can change it back to ext3?

Also, something else that is weird. I have a 30GB HD. QTParted says that one partition (the ext3, showing up as reiser as well) is 16TB.

I'm no expert. But, I don't think TestDisk actually distinquishes between ext3 and reiserfs in the way it updates the partition table.

When I select a drive, select Analyze, then select Proceed, it allows you to change the Type (using T). But, you can't select between ext3 and reiserfs.

I could be mistaken. But, I think it considers them both to be Linux (using a type 83 for the partition). I think it's using other indicators it finds as to how it distinquishes the file system type.

Jim C.

Partition recovery always carries risks associated with it.

If testdisk is identifying the partition as reiserfs, then it probably is reiser. It sounds like, at this point, you are losing nothing by allowing testdisk to work with it as reiser.

The choice, however, is yours.

"You have two labs?"
"Each has its place. At the university, I try to please the Federal Government. Here, I negotiate with God."

When I use the "list files" option, it outputs "No file found, filesystem seems to be damaged."

I ran PhotoRec as well. I got some files, still shifting through them finding the ones I need, but at least I have some.