Linux won't boot -- bitten by file system bug?
I'm in desperate need for help and I hope someone on this
list is able to help me out, I'd really appreciate it.
I shut down my Debian box last night, and turned it off when
it displayed the message "Power down." When I tried to boot
tonight, it simply displayed "LI" and did nothing. Now the
LILO manual says that this is either caused by a geometry
error or by moving /boot/boot.b without running the map
installer, but I did no such thing.
I ran Partition Magic 4.01 from a DOS disk and, besides treating
it like a 8.4 GB disk (it is a 10 GB IBM IDE drive), the partion
table looks okay. Windows 98, occupying a little gaming partition
(so sue me ;->) on this drive, boots fine.
I am running a 2.2.10 kernel. The root partition has only
6 MB free space (according to Partion Magic), which is due
to my running smbd with debug level 3, thus creating a rather
large log file, but this shouldn't be a problem, should it?
I tried booting from the slink boot disk with kernel 2.0.36,
but it invariably fails, no matter what I try: pressing Return
results in "Boot failed" after loading "root.bin", and typing
"rescue root=/dev/hda7" gives "Boot failed" after displaying
"Loading linux".
This puzzles me, because even if the 2.0.36 kernel doesn't
recognize the partition table for the 10 GB drive (the BIOS
returns false values which the kernel 2.0.36 doesn't recognize,
which is why I switched to a 2.2.x kernel in the first place),
I see no reason why it shouldn't boot from the rescue disk so
that I can try to mount the root partition to see what's
wrong, or at least access some of the data to back it up
before trying to fix anything. :-(
Now, a friend of mine told me about a "rare file system bug"
in kernels 2.2.9 and 2.2.10 that was fixed in 2.2.11 -- which
I hadn't come around to installing yet :-( -- which might
have wreaked havoc on my file system, causing LILO to fail.
Could this be the source of the problem? If so, how can I
fix it? Is there a way to access my hard drive by booting
from a rescue disk? Do I need a 2.2.x kernel based boot disk
for that? If this probably isn't the source of the problem,
what could be? How can I proceed in order to make progress?
I'll be more than glad to post any further information you
might need -- I had just moved personal data on that drive
last night, and haven't had a chance to back up yet! (Murphy
strikes again.) :-(
I really appreciate any replies!
TIA,
Matt
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