Re: Help wanted: reading Linux/SPARC partitions from a x86 PC
On Wed, Nov 12, 2003 at 09:58:08AM +0100, Antonello wrote:
> Hi there,
> I was wondering if there's a way to restore data from a Linux/SPARC
> formatted drive (ext3 filesystem with Sun disklabel and the like) using
> a standard x86 PC for disaster recovery purposes.
> Plugging the drive into the PC allows fdisk to see the partition
> table but (most probably due to the Sun disklabel or disk geometry,
> or whatever ;)) I can't mount any of those partition. Has anyone got
> through this situation? Maybe enabling advanced partition selection in
> the kernel might help, but I would like some feedback before modifying
> the pc's kernel (which is really really customized, and integrates many
> patches and external modules).
How about using a mail client the wraps your lines? Just a courtesy.
As soon as you mount the filesystem, especially if it's a journaled FS,
it's going to try and do things to it, at least, if there's stuff in
the journal, but there probably is if the system crashed while that
file system was mounted. Depending on your distro attempting to mount
a dirty ext2 partition might also start fsck on it. I don't know if
you want that. But anyway, yeah, your system should be able to see and
understand partition tables once you've enabled advanced partitions
and selected Sun labels. If your current kernel doesn't have that,
then what fdisk is telling you is complete garbage. And you'll want
to make sure that the version of fdisk can handle advanced partition.
I think woody's is recent enough.
Ext3 should be mountable on x86-endian machines regardless of what
endian machine they were created on. But again, you're going to need
advanced partition support to accomplish that.
Good luck,
a
Reply to: