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Last edited by Alphi on Sun Apr 27, 2008 6:03 pm; edited 1 time in total

Last night I had the silly idea that I'd upgrade my server (running 7.10 Ubuntu, if memory serves) to the new version of ubuntu (8.04, I believe).

I started the upgrade process, saw it would take several hours, so I let it go and I went to bed.

Foolishly, I didn't think until this morning that I should have done a full backup first.

Now, this morning (ironically nearly 12 hours after I started the 2 hour upgrade), I suddenly lost connection to the shares on that machine. Strange.

So I checked the machine, and it was locked, with a message on screen warning that the upgrade was trying to change a config file that I'd modified (note: it wasn't one that I've deliberately modified, unless it was part of a software installer).

Foolishly again, I didn't write down the exact error message, so I can't even tell you what it is/was.

Now, I tried to reboot the machine, and it tells me that my main user account doesn't have a home directory. Neither does my backup user account. It asked if I wanted to use root as my user folder.

Logging in as my backup account (so I don't mess too much with my main one) I told it to use the root as it's user folder (since hitting cancel just got me back to a login prompt).

Unfortunately, once I did, it "boots" up to a blank screen with nothing else.

Any suggestions on how I can get this to boot up, so I can attempt to survey/repair the damage?

Thanks all!

Posted: Sun Apr 27, 2008 6:23 am Post subject:

One minor thing - I mentioned that on booting up, all I see is a blank screen. But it's not crashed (not really), since I can also see (and control) the mouse pointer on screen... I just can't do anything with it - nothing to click on.

Edit: Just noticed another thing - my file server (SAMBA) seems to be back online - I can browse to my shares from another computer. So I'm not 100% hosed, just partially.

Unfortunately, one of the things I use my server for is serving up saved shows/movies from my server to my TiVo, using both the Galleon and PyTivo software. The thing is, I have to be logged into an account for those applications to run (I'm pretty sure).

Edit #2: I take it back, partially - it looks like while I can see my shares, I can't see the files in most of them. Oddly enough, I *DO* see the files from one share. Just not the others.

Posted: Sun Apr 27, 2008 7:35 am Post subject:

sounds like the smb.conf is borked... also sounds like there's numerous other issues that you haven't found yet. I'd try re-installing and see if it makes it through. you might have to completely re-config your shares.

Posted: Sun Apr 27, 2008 7:43 am Post subject:

Can you get to a terminal?

(You can get a terminal by logging in remotely with ssh from another linux box, or Putty from a windows box, or by hitting control-alt-F1 in X to get to a virtual terminal login, or as a last resort by fondling the kernel boot params to boot into runlevel 3.)

Alphi wrote:
The thing is, I have to be logged into an account for those applications to run (I'm pretty sure).

I'd be extremely surprised if that were the case. You can write an init script for just about anything.

Posted: Sun Apr 27, 2008 8:01 am Post subject:

CMTG wrote:

Alphi wrote:
The thing is, I have to be logged into an account for those applications to run (I'm pretty sure).

I'd be extremely surprised if that were the case. You can write an init script for just about anything.

Actually, you're probably right - I'm just new enough to Linux that I haven't a clue how to set it up... Either way, I figure I can worry about that once I get reconfigured.

One thought I had was booting a live cd on that system, and using that to check (and/or backup) the config files, taking special care to back up the ones I *KNOW* I've made changes to, especially things like the smb.conf file and the etc/fstab.

In fact, if I can manage to recover just those, reinstalling shouldn't be a big deal at all, since almost all the configuration I did to the machine was in those two files.

That and installing PyTivo and Galleon - and I figure if I installed them before, I can do it again if needed.

Posted: Sun Apr 27, 2008 8:04 am Post subject:

CMTG wrote:
Can you get to a terminal?

(You can get a terminal by logging in remotely with ssh from another linux box, or Putty from a windows box, or by hitting control-alt-F1 in X to get to a virtual terminal login, or as a last resort by fondling the kernel boot params to boot into runlevel 3.)

Alphi wrote:
The thing is, I have to be logged into an account for those applications to run (I'm pretty sure).

I'd be extremely surprised if that were the case. You can write an init script for just about anything.

BTW, I was able to open a terminal to it from my windows machine. When I tried to log in, it seems to have worked, but gave me a "Could not chdir to home directory /home/lyonsm: No such file or directory." (note: lyonsm is my main login on the machine).

What should I try now?

Posted: Sun Apr 27, 2008 8:11 am Post subject:

One more thing I noticed - the way I have it configured is as such:

I have a /shares folder I created, and under that I have a folder for each share (each one it's own partition).

I have /etc/fstab set up to mount those to the proper folders under /shares, and I have smb.conf set up to share each of them via samba.

One other "trick" I try from time to time is running df -l so I can determine how full each partition is.

Just now when I ran that from the terminal I do have access to, it showed one of my shared partitions (the one I can access from other machines) as expected. However, df -l did not show the other share partitions. At all.

Sure, I see the / (root) folder, as well as /var/run, /var/lock, /dev, and /dev/shm.

One other thing I just thought about - I'm pretty sure I put the home folders for all users on another partition as well, including sharing each via samba.

Any suggestions?

Posted: Sun Apr 27, 2008 8:35 am Post subject:

Can you run a Live CD and chroot into your system?

Example:

Code: Select all

sudo mount /dev/drive_name (eg hda1) /media/ubuntu


sudo chroot /media/ubuntu


su

If you can get in, you can perhaps try updating (maybe the upgrade failed?) or backing up what's there...

[edit]Just saw your most recent post; perhaps your /etc/fstab is broken and doesn't see the partition that your /home is on? If you can chroot in and post the contents we can have a go at dissecting it.

Posted: Sun Apr 27, 2008 9:23 am Post subject:

Jaymac wrote:
Can you run a Live CD and chroot into your system?

Example:

Code: Select all
sudo mount /dev/drive_name (eg hda1) /media/ubuntu sudo chroot /media/ubuntu su

If you can get in, you can perhaps try updating (maybe the upgrade failed?) or backing up what's there...

[edit]Just saw your most recent post; perhaps your /etc/fstab is broken and doesn't see the partition that your /home is on? If you can chroot in and post the contents we can have a go at dissecting it.

silly question - I can ssh to it from my windows box, and I can do a "cat" on /etc/fstab

What's the easiest way I can capture that so I can post it?

Posted: Sun Apr 27, 2008 9:34 am Post subject:

Jaymac wrote:
Can you run a Live CD and chroot into your system?

Example:

Code: Select all
sudo mount /dev/drive_name (eg hda1) /media/ubuntu sudo chroot /media/ubuntu su

If you can get in, you can perhaps try updating (maybe the upgrade failed?) or backing up what's there...

[edit]Just saw your most recent post; perhaps your /etc/fstab is broken and doesn't see the partition that your /home is on? If you can chroot in and post the contents we can have a go at dissecting it.

Oh, one other thing - I was able to see /etc/fstab, and it looks fine to me (from what I can tell, admittedly).

In fact, one thing it does is mount (for example) /dev/hda6 as /shares/games

But when I tried "sudo mount /dev/hda6 /shares/games"

I get the following message:

mount: special device /dev/hda6 does not exist

I think I'm onto something - just noticed that my root (/) directory is mapped to /dev/sda1, not /dev/hda1 as I would have expected.

So when I tried mounting /shares/games on /dev/sda1, it seems to have worked.

So I suspect the quick and easy thing is to update my fstab to point to the sda* partitions instead. Question though: since I only have a command line, and I'm used to (spoiled by, I admit) GEDIT which is gui-dependant, what's my best bet for editing the fstab file?

Thanks!

Posted: Sun Apr 27, 2008 10:27 am Post subject:

Alphi wrote:
silly question - I can ssh to it from my windows box, and I can do a "cat" on /etc/fstab

What's the easiest way I can capture that so I can post it?

Copy it from your ssh window into your Firefox window. Wink

If you are using putty as your ssh client, the act of highlighting anything automatically copies it to your clipboard.

Alphi wrote:

I think I'm onto something - just noticed that my root (/) directory is mapped to /dev/sda1, not /dev/hda1 as I would have expected.

sda1 is (usually) the first partition on the first SATA or SCSI disk.

hda1 is (usually) the first partition on the first IDE disk.

Does that line up with your hardware?

Posted: Sun Apr 27, 2008 10:34 am Post subject:

Alphi wrote:

So I suspect the quick and easy thing is to update my fstab to point to the sda* partitions instead. Question though: since I only have a command line, and I'm used to (spoiled by, I admit) GEDIT which is gui-dependant, what's my best bet for editing the fstab file?

You are pretty much guaranteed to have vi available on any Linux or Unix system you will ever come across. I can recommend learning how do to basic text editing in it exactly for this kind of situation.

Do a:

Code: Select all

$ sudo vi /etc/fstab

Vi is a modal editor. This means you need to hit i or a to enter insert mode and begin typing and the escape key to finish. Whilst you are not in insert mode, type :w to write the file to disk and :q to quit. If you get into a pickle, typing :q! will quit without saving changes.

Posted: Sun Apr 27, 2008 10:37 am Post subject:

nano is another option..

Code: Select all

sudo nano -w /etc/fstab

Posted: Sun Apr 27, 2008 10:54 am Post subject:

Alphi wrote:
One other "trick" I try from time to time is running df -l so I can determine how full each partition is.

BTW, you can also use the -h option to get a more human readable output from the df command.

Posted: Sun Apr 27, 2008 11:32 am Post subject:

CMTG wrote:
Alphi wrote:
silly question - I can ssh to it from my windows box, and I can do a "cat" on /etc/fstab

What's the easiest way I can capture that so I can post it?

Copy it from your ssh window into your Firefox window.

If you are using putty as your ssh client, the act of highlighting anything automatically copies it to your clipboard.

Alphi wrote:

I think I'm onto something - just noticed that my root (/) directory is mapped to /dev/sda1, not /dev/hda1 as I would have expected.

sda1 is (usually) the first partition on the first SATA or SCSI disk.

hda1 is (usually) the first partition on the first IDE disk.

Does that line up with your hardware?

Hmmm, that's an odd thing then... This machine has nothing but IDE drives in it... I guess that explains why it originaly was hda1. I dunno, maybe with the updated Ubuntu it changed to sda* for everything, sata/scsi and IDE.