[vox-tech] kernel hang on partition check

[Bryan Richter]

Hi folks,

I have apparently messed something up somewhere in my partition table.
For the record, I was very stressed over finals and related stuff this
entire week, so it's entirely possible I did something really stupid. :-P

The affect of the problem is this: my custom-built 2.4.19 kernel hangs on the line following "Partition check:", like this:

-- 8< ---
Uniform Multi-Platform E-IDE driver Revision: 6.31
ide: Assuming 33MHz system bus speed for PIO modes; override with idebus=xx
PIIX4: IDE controller on PCI bus 00 dev 61
PIIX4: chipset revision 1
PIIX4: not 100% native mode: will probe irqs later
    ide0: BM-DMA at 0xfff0-0xfff7, BIOS settings: hda:DMA, hdb:pio
    ide1: BM-DMA at 0xfff8-0xffff, BIOS settings: hdc:DMA, hdd:pio
hda: IC35L040AVER07-0, ATA DISK drive
hdc: ARTEC WRR-52X 1.15 20030107, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive
hdd: CD-532E-B, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive
ide0 at 0x1f0-0x1f7,0x3f6 on irq 14
ide1 at 0x170-0x177,0x376 on irq 15
hda: 80418240 sectors (41174 MB) w/1916KiB Cache, CHS=5005/255/63, UDMA(33)
hdc: ATAPI 52X CD-ROM CD-R/RW drive, 2048kB Cache, UDMA(33)
Uniform CD-ROM driver Revision: 3.12
hdd: ATAPI 32X CD-ROM drive, 128kB Cache, DMA
Partition check:
 /dev/ide/host0/bus0/target0/lun0:
--- 8< ---
(copied by hand, so not guaranteed free of spelling errors)

I can boot Knoppix 3.2 and access the partitions on the offending drive, and I can boot Windows2000, which was installed on the first partition.

According to fdisk in Knoppix, 
/dev/hda1: start=1, end=1020, fs=fat32, bootable
/dev/hda3: start=1021, end=1036, swap
/dev/hda4: start=1037, end=5005, extended
/dev/hda5: start=1037, end=2847, fs=ext2

/dev/hda5 is actually reiserfs, but I don't think that's related.

/dev/hda = /dev/ide/host0/bus0/target0/lun0, since I use devfs.

Things I did that might have screwed something up:
1. At the beginning of the week, when I could still boot this kernel,
I had two 4G partitions, /dev/hda1 and /dev/hda2, where my current
/dev/hda1 resides. I decided to get rid of those two and combine them
into one ext3 partition, so I'd have space to back up my friend's
computer and reinstall their operating system.
2. I installed a new piece of hardware, a cd-rom r/rw drive. It went
on my secondary ide cable, along with my previous cd-rom drive.
3. I reinstalled windows2000 a couple times, in the new 8G partition.
4. I temporarily installed my friend's harddrive in my computer to
facilitate transferring files. It went on my primary ide cable.
5. On numerous occasions, I plugged ide cables in backwards, or had
both devices marked "master" on the same ide bus, or put the master
device where the slave should have gone, and generally wasn't very
cautious. :-/
6. I did all of the above at the same time.

I've tried rewriting partition files, removing the partition, changing the boot flags, and I've even tried some MS utilities like fixmbr. I'm stuck. The one thing I actually haven't tried is putting the partitions back the way they were (2 4G vfat partitions). I guess I should.

Anyway, anyone have any ideas where I should start looking to fix this?

-Bryan R
btrichter@ucdavis.edu