Re: [Sheflug] aargh, disk crash

["Chris J/#6" <xxxxx [at] xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> Now remarkably, linux kept on running, though at one point in switching
> from a console to X-windows the screen turned red which made me think:
> panic, virus and switched off.  So then I thought, well, where do I go
> from here, things can't get much worse.  So booted up again and I'm able
> to carry on as before but without my mozilla inbox and stuff.  Ain't
> linux great?  I can't imagine windoze carrying on like this after a disk
> crash. 
> 

Depends which bit of the disk is damaged :) My /home partition on my old 
6GB Maxtor was screwed beyond belief, so whilst the machine could boot as 
the boot partitions were okay, any attempt to write a file in /home failed.

> Assuming I've managed to back everything I need up, how do I find out
> just how much of the disk is damaged, and is there any prospect of
> recovering the damaged data?

I just kicked off a cp -R to copy the dud partitions over ... it took 
bloody ages as the machine kept having to retry dodgy sectors before giving 
up though...Alex suggested using dd, which should also work.

> Finally, any suggestions about repair/replacement?  It is a 45Gig IBM
> Maxtor disk so I'm reluctant to scrap it, but once bitten etc.
> 

Well Maxtor run a trade-in ... if the disk dies within its gurantee period 
(5 years I think with Maxtor -- check web page) you can get a no quibble 
replacement drive. Other drive manufactureres do similar things as well, so 
you might want to look into that.

> >From /var/log/messages:
> 
> Oct  1 09:49:14 linux kernel: hde: lost interrupt
> Oct  1 09:49:14 linux kernel: hde: dma_intr: status=0x51 { DriveReady
> SeekComplete Error }
> Oct  1 09:49:14 linux kernel: hde: dma_intr: error=0x40 {
> UncorrectableError }, LBAsect=21625877, sector=82648
> Oct  1 09:49:14 linux kernel: end_request: I/O error, dev 21:08 (hde),
> sector 82648
> Oct  1 09:49:14 linux kernel: vs-13070: reiserfs_read_inode2: i/o
> failure occurred trying to find stat data of [4038 3771 0x0 SD]
> 

Similar to what I had when my ext2 partitions went wobbly.

Everything else in your mail I can't answer ... not easily anyway :) Network backups could be done with something as simple as:

	tar cvf - * | rsh <remote host> tar xvBpf - 

but that would imply trusted network :) Other possibilities involve other incantations of tar/cpio and automated ftp/rcp/scp.

Chris...

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