repair v.7 installation

[Chris Hill]

On Fri, 28 Nov 2008, PJ wrote:

[...]

> 1. On boot up and just before the crash there were warnings of an 
> "interrupt storm" whatever that may mean and then there are messages 
> about bad file descriptor; and there is a WARNING / was not properly 
> dismounted (obviously because of the hardware problem) and "init 
> /bin/sh on /etc/rc terminated abnormally, going to single user 
> mode....

Last time I saw a "bad file descriptor" it was due to disk problems 
caused by a power hit since I had no UPS on that machine. In that case I 
was able to recover using the manufacturer's utility ("seatools" for the 
Seagate disk).

> 2. on bootup, there is a warning - /etc/rc WARNING run_rc_command: 
> cannot run /usr/sbin/inetd
>
> 3. for login : in openpam_load_module (): no pam_opie.so found
>
> 4. login: pam_start(): system error
>
> 5. fsck gets wrong superblocks and cannot fix anything
>
> 6. When in single user mode, cannot access /usr or /var
>
> So, now I get the feeling that the installation is completely screwed. 
> What I would like to recover is onle a bunch of files on the /usr 
> partition like the web stuff for apache and some other files.

All of these things smell like disk problems to me. But what do I know.

> What are my options? is there a way I could access these files?

Booting from a live CD to recover your files to another drive has bee 
suggested, and that's a good idea. Apart from that, I would try the 
drive manufacturer's recovery tools before abandoning the system. Check 
their website and see if they don't have a bootable ISO with some sort 
of disk tools.

HTH, and good luck.

--
Chris Hill               chris at monochrome.org
**                     [ Busy Expunging <|> ]