On Sat, Feb 01, 2003 at 01:29:53AM -0500, Lloyd Zusman wrote: > Quoting Nathan E Norman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > > > On Fri, Jan 31, 2003 at 11:59:28PM -0500, Lloyd Zusman wrote: > > > > > > [ ... ] > > > > > > So ... now that things are sort of back to normal, my question > > > is this: what caused the filesystem to become read-only to > > > begin with? Could it be hardware errors? The fact that the > > > fsck found no errors seems to point to this as a possible cause, > > > correct? > > > > No, hardware errors would cause fs corruption I think. Probably the > > fact that the options field was blank caused the problem. In the > > future, make sure that field says "defaults" if you have nothing else > > to put in there :-) > > Well, it does say "defaults" now, and I rebooted with it set that > way. But a few minutes ago I started getting disk error after disk > error. So I think that I do indeed have some hardware problems, > after all [sigh].
Gack! How old is the drive? Any chance the issue is termination or a misconfigured jumper? You're using an Adaptec 2940? > So now, I have a completely new question: > > I belive that the error is on my first drive, the /dev/sda drive > on SCSI channel 0. My second drive (/dev/sdb, SCSI channel 1) > seems fine. Assuming I can boot up and run reliably for a while, > I want to copy everything from /dev/sda to the top level of > /dev/sdb. Then, I'd like to reset my system to boot off of > the second drive (which has plenty of empty space). > > I think I should do something like this (but I'm not sure if this > is correct): > > 1. My /dev/sdb only has one partition, and I have mounted it as > /opt. So what I'll do is create an /opt subdirectory on that > drive and move everything from /dev/sdb1 there. Sounds good. > 2. I should use tar to copy all the filesystems under root, > except for /opt, over to the /dev/sdb1 partition. This should > copy links and permissions correctly. [Is that true?] Use tar if you like, but I personally would use find and cpio to do this. The command is "find / -xdev | cpio -padm /mnt". The "-xdev" only finds files on the root partition, the one you are backing up. Running the commands as root ensures that you preserve permissions and ownership. Replace "/mnt" with "/opt" if you've left /dev/sdb1 mounted there. > 3. I should change /etc/fstab on the second partition to only > have one huge partition (i.e., get rid of the /usr, /home, > and other mount points). OIC ... all partitions are on /dev/sda except for /opt? Hmm, that complicates things a bit. In that case my command above would change to "find / -fstype ext2 | grep -v '^/opt/' | cpio -padm /opt". Here I assume you've left /dev/sdb1 mounted on /opt. I also changed find so it recurses into all filesystems that are ext2 (replace wiuth ext3 if that's what you're using) ... I do this so we don't recurse into /proc. If you have some eclectic mix of filesystems you could do away with the "-fstype" option to find and replace the grep with a more complex one: find / -fstype ext2 | grep -vE '^/(opt|proc)/' | cpio -padm /opt Note in either case the trailing '/' in the regex; this copies the mount point but nothing in the mount point. > 4. ???????? I need to create a proper boot sector on the > /dev/sdb1 partition. How do I do that? > > 5. ???????? I configure my system to boot off of /dev/sdb1 > instead of off the faulty drive. > > Does this sound reasonable? If not, can anyone suggest what I'm > missing? And I'd be grateful if someone could explain how to do > steps 4 and 5. > > Thanks again for the earlier help, and thanks in advance for any > help you might be able to offer for this new system-copy task. This may prove difficult. Why not just remove /dev/sda once you've copied stuff over? Then, if you run LILO boot wiuth a rescue floppy and/or CD, type "linux root=/dev/sda1" at the prompt, and rerun lilo once you're up. If you use GRUB, it would be a good idea to make a grub boot floppy; then you can boot to any kernel on any drive in the system! Google for this or ask me; I'll look around for my link. If you don't remove /dev/sda, you're going to have to depend on it to provide a master boot record to boot the rest of the system. Since you don't trust that drive this seems unwise. Above all, _plan_ and make sure you are _comfortable_ wiuth what you are about to do. If you have a tape backup, use it. If you have a cd writer, burn a bunch of CDs with your data. -- Nathan Norman - Incanus Networking mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] prepBut nI vrbLike adjHungarian! qWhat's artThe adjBig nProblem? -- alec flett @netscape -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
