Power failure, non-booting Linux install
mcwc
Vancouver, BC Member
During the early hours this morning, the power went out and both my main rig and laptop turned off, which has Linux installed on it. When I turned my laptop on, LILO loads just fine and when it goes to boot Linux, it stays stuck at this screen (attached image). Note, the cursor is not blinking.
I've tried using the "rescue" option on the Mandrake install CD to remount and reinstall LILO but it done nothing. It still boots to the same screen.
Now, it is there anyway to recover this install or should do an upgrade install to get Linux working again?
I've tried using the "rescue" option on the Mandrake install CD to remount and reinstall LILO but it done nothing. It still boots to the same screen.
Now, it is there anyway to recover this install or should do an upgrade install to get Linux working again?
0
Comments
ext3 or Reiser??? If Ext3, then run fsck. For Reiser, run reiserfsck. If you are running Reier on Mandrake 10, this could be Reiser 4. Docs and recovery info for Reiser is at http://www.namesys.com (yup, the URL got moved again) and they have several scenario walkthroughs.
Unfortunately, it looks like the system tried to suspend, got caught in mid-suspend with a power failure. Probable file system or journal damage.
Your file system checker probably can help some, but fix that before doing a reload in this case.
After the file system recovery, with Lilo as bootloader (I use GRUB as the current one detects differnces in boot options at boot by itself), do this in console, which can be a rescue console if you mount /
lilo -qv
lilo -vt
lilo
First sequence tell Lilo to look for available boot options, be verbose about them.
Second tests the config but does not write anything permanently.
Third tells Lilo to update its config file.
I hate to tell you this, but if you were fixing a kernel at power-outage time, that is when Linux will be very vulnerable to HD going down in mid-write and you ending up with a corrupt kernel, which is the other major scenario causer for something like this is. So, if you could talk here more about what you were doing on the Linux box when power went down (or even since last Linux reboot), diag and recover steps would be more precise from me. I started using Mandrake at version 8.0 and know some parts of it better than most other distros. I also am running 10 Official here, so might be able to dig up some appropo help snippets and links if I know more about what to look for.
Linux might want 15 min to think about things with those messages, also. Let it try for that long at least.
AND, if you have multiple chjoices in Lilo, try the Linux-enterprise choice once or the Linux choice and see if you get different results, these ARE different kernels precompiles. You might at least be able to get into a normal Linux run long enough to fix the "other" non-working kernel by reinstalling just that one kernel package from within a Linux boot with urpmi or RPM.
The power went out in the middle of the night, while I was sleeping. My laptop was left there, folding and that's all it was doing during the night. The last time I rebooted was 3 to 4 days ago.
I'll try my best to understand what you wrote and see if I can fix the problem.
Thanks for the help John.
With a laptop, cherge the batteries first please, and then run fsck with laptop plugged into a surge strip. Batteries will back up the fsck run's integrity if the power cuts out in mid-fsck, and probably let it finish if it gets about 1\3 done beofre power cuts.
What's really interesting about this scenario, for me, is that the laptop might have low-power suspended if the laptop was not plugged into wall outlet via transformer when left to run overnight. If so, you might have little or no file system damage. I did not realize this was definitely a laptop install when I first posted, and that fact alone could make things more interesting-- and if the laptop suspended itself you might have lost little to nothing if batteries were not fully discharged and laptop self-suspended. This could happen before or after power went out.
Anyway, I tried running fsck in the recovery console from the install disk but bash can't find fsck. A little searching at linuxquestions.org, I found that I could use fsck.ext3 and it worked. I used "fsck.ext3 -yfv /dev/hda1" and "fsck.ext3 -yfv /dev/hda6". Both partitions came out clean. It still doesn't boot. I am getting MandrakeMove right now and try it that works in an hour or so. If it doesn't, I'll have my laptop fold with MandrakeMove till tomorrow morning.
maybe you just have a corrupt hibernation memory image. When linux hibernates it writes the image to the swap partition. You could try to just reformat the swap partition and then it should boot up normally, if there is no image found.
Also you can pass a kernel option at boot, so that the kernel will ignore the image and start up normally. There are different ways to hibernate, but to me it looks like you are using Suspend-to-Disk, so the option "pmdisk=off" should do the trick. Other options are "noresume" or "noresume2", depending on the hibernation method.
I would definitely try this first before reinstalling, it might work. Excuse my rather confusing english, but its late here in Europe and all the wine bottles are empty ; ).
Good luck,
Michael
Also, thanks for your help John.
I think I'll change my boot manager to GRUB and change my ACPI settings.
When you are interested in setting up some acpi power saving methods you might want to check out this tutorial, which goes into a lot of details. More can be found here.
For myself I found apm to work much better with my old lappy. I now have hiberate, suspend and standby working. There is a good tutorial here.
Have fun,
Michael