[CLUE-Tech] Restoring filesystems on an IDE drive

[David Anselmi]

You might take a look at this:

http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html

I say that because I don't understand your problem.  Since the last few 
questions I've posted have been ignored, I think I'll read it again 
before I post anymore, too.

What you describe below is something that it seems to me doesn't happen. 
  So if you can stand not to "fix" it by reformatting or whatever, I'd 
like to see the machine at installfest (15 Feb).

Michael Black wrote:
> Here is the question that I have.  I recently lost the filesystem on a 
> drive.  I ran e2fsck and repaired the errors that were reported after a 
> system startup.  Heck, the only reason I shut it off was to replace the 
> power supply.

Why were there errors?  Just chance?  Did the PS fail and cause an 
unclean shutdown?  Any idea what they might have been?

> The e2fsck worked when I have had several errors.  After 
> I successfully booted it up, I was able to move into the drive, write to 
> it, etc.  However, later that day, the drive simply lost the 
> filesystem.  It doesn’t report any errors during startup.  The only 
> thing that it is reported when doing an “ls” on the drive is the 
> lost+found directory.  There have been no reformatting of the drive, nor 
> was there any overwriting of the filesystem. 

Did you run e2fsck on this partition again?  Did you look in the 
lost+found directory?  Since you have a lost+found, you didn't actually 
lose the filesystem, just the files.

So, what could cause this?  I think it is unlikely that it was a 
physical drive failure (given that there aren't any driver errors) or a 
coincidental corruption.  Here are some ideas:

"rm -rf" - since lost+found is owned by root, it may be the only thing 
left after an accidental deletion (does anyone else use your box? crackers?)

Is something else mounted there?  You could have the wrong partition 
mounted, or an empty partition mounted on top of the right one.  It 
might help if you told us what directory we're talking about, what mount 
says, and what's in your /etc/fstab.  You can also use fdisk -l to see 
what partitions are on each drive.

Did you do any installs, upgrades, or adjusting of any partitions (using 
cfdisk, fdisk, Partition Magic, parted)?  Do you have other OSs or other 
types of filesystems on the box (I assume you're using ext2 for 
everything)?  You can use df to see if your partition sizes are what you 
expect (for mounted partitions).

Not that it matters much, but what version and distro is this?  What 
kernel (and is it custom compiled)?  Did you change kernels around the 
time this happened?

That's all I can think of at the moment.  Let us know if you make any 
progress.  You can also try getting diagnostics from the drive 
manufacturer.  You might need a DOS boot disk to use with them but that 
would give you some assurance that the drive is not having problems.

Dave