24 Apr
2004
24 Apr
'04
8:57 p.m.
Thanks to these replies, I learned to use "linux
single" at that boot:
prompt
That got me in a shell, along with this error:
The superblock could not be read or does not describe a correct ext2
filesytem. If the device is valid and it really contains an ext2 filesystem
(and not swap or ufs or something else), then the superblock is corrupt, and
you might try running e2fsck with an alternate superblock:
e2fsck -b 8193 <device>
fsck.ext3: Filesystem revision too high while trying to open /dev/hda2
eek, I say. so I said oh alright and entered:
e2fsck -b 8193 /dev/hda2
and got the same superblock error
so I referred to Jan's email and typed:
fsck /dev/hda2
and got the same superblock error
so I said hmm and tried:
fsck /dev/hda
and got a similar superblock error only it mentioned ext2 - odd?
Sounds bad, like the filesystem got corrupted.
and that's where I'm stuck currently - worried
that I've got a hardware
malfunction :)
here's the caveat: last night before hearing back from anyone, I, in my
grand wise impatience, booted with the red hat cd and entered the rescue
mode. there, per instructions I found in an archived email, I attempted to
mount hda2 and it said the device doesn't exist. eek. so then, in my GRAND
GRAND wise impatience, I decided to let Red Hat CD install a new OS, while
keeping all partitions and just using free space. during this install
process, I got error messages while reading hda - i hobbled through the
process, let it reboot, and came out with the same kernel panic, which led
me to believe I was having a harddisk screw up.
What kind of error messages did you get during the new install and at
what point in the process? What is the current partitioning structure of
the disk (after all that happened)? You can find out by doing "fdisk -l"
from the rescue prompt, I guess.
It could be that the new install did not update grub (who knows why) to
point to the newly installed system and you are still trying to boot the
old one. Hmmmm, if fact that could be the case if you have duplicated
labels. Check the labels of the partitions that are supposed to be the
"/" partition (you should have two if I understand correctly what you
did). If one of your root partitions is /dev/hda2 then:
e2label /dev/hda2
should output "/"
Do that with the other partitions. If you have two "/"'s then there's
the boot confusion. Change the OLD one to something else with (replace
with the proper device):
e2label /dev/hdx "OLD/"
Try booting again...
-- Fernando