[CoLoCo] Urgent Help Needed: File system screw-up

[Ringo Kamens]

I looked into FIRE but I don't know which app to use. I figure the
best way to do this would dd /dev/sda12 to /dev/another in case I mess
up, so I can always restart. I also got told by a friend to use
OnTrack, which is a program I have used to recover NTFS and FAT32
partitions which has done pretty well. How good is the ext3/2 support?
Also, since all of the data from the original partition is still
there, is there any tool to remake the file table (or whatever ext2
uses) from the data there? I mean, the data is untouched and pristine.
It hasn't been written over except for a small part of the file table.
Thanks for all of the help you have given me so far, I really
appreciate it. I just want to get this right, since there are a lot of
important files on there.
Comrade Ringo Kamens


On 8/22/07, Kevin Fries <kfries at cctus.com> wrote:
> On Wed, 2007-08-22 at 09:16 -0600, Neal McBurnett wrote:
> > I'll just chime in with one more thing that won't help now, but may
> > provide the right sort of motivatation to do the work that has to be
> > done before the next time....
>
> I really feel for the OP.  I once had a boss that decided that / was
> getting too full, so he tried to move /usr to a new partition.  After
> moving copying all the files into the nearest black hole, he
> deleted /usr, and rebooted.  It was an ugly sight :-)
>
> But the OP brings up two very important issues: First, never mess with
> your drive unless the data is expendable or backed up.  Second, NEVER
> MESS WITH YOUR DRIVE UNLESS THE DATA IS EXPENDABLE OR BACKED UP!!!
>
> My advice to fix:
>    * Do not trust that partition any longer
>
>    * If the partition is mounted, umount it, and remove any entry in
>      /etc/fstab
>
>    * Run down to Office Depot and get yourself a Western Digital
>      MyBook.
>
>    * use dd to bit-copy that partition into a file on the external hard
>      drive (# mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/rescue
>             # dd if=/dev/hda12 of=/mnt/rescue/backup.img)
>
>    * mount the copy via loopback and copy anything you want to try and
>      keep (# mount -o loop,ro /mnt/rescue/backup.img /mnt/rescue2
>            # <copy commands to rescue data>
>            # umount /mnt/rescue2)
>
>    * kill the untrustworthy partition (# mkfs.ext3 /dev/hda12)
>
>    * never do this again, lol (easy to say since "I've NEVER done
>      anything like that", he says tongue firmly in cheek :-D )
>
> Good luck
>
> --
> Kevin Fries
> Senior Linux Engineer
> Computer and Communications Technologies, Inc.
> a division of Japan Communications, Inc.
>
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