[vox-tech] Hosed hard drive?

[Alex Mandel]

Richard Crawford wrote:
> Running Kubuntu Dapper flight 6 on dual-core PIII.  The hard drive is 120 GB.  
> 
> This evening, while working on this computer, it started telling me that my 
> filesystem was read-only.  I rebooted, and the system got as far as checking 
> the root filesystem, whereupon it gives me the following error:
> 
> /: UNEXEPECTED INCONSISTENCY; RUN fsck MANUALLY
>    (i.e., without -a or -p options)
> 
> When I execute fsck...
> 
> root at seamus:  fsck
> fsck 1.38 (30-Jun-2005)
> e2fsck 1.38 (30-Jun-2005)
> fsck.ext3: No such file or directory while trying to 
> open /dev/mapper/Ubuntu-root
> 
> The superblock could not be read or does not contain a correct ext2 
> filesystem.  If the device is valid and it really contains an ext2 filesystem 
> (and not swap or ufs or something else), then the superblock is corrupt, and 
> you might try running e2fsck with an alternate superblock:
>     e2fsck -b 8193 <device>
> 
> So I tried...
> 
> # e2fsck -b 8193 /dev/hda
> 
> and got the same message.  I also tried 16384 and 32768 (based on the 
> information from man e2fsck -- I honestly don't know the blocksize on my 
> filesystem).
> 
> dmesg shows nothing useful.  However, syslog has the following entries from 
> just before the system crashed:
> May 11 18:12:44 seamus kernel: [4478515.955000] ppdev: user-space parallel 
> port driver
> May 11 18:13:05 seamus kernel: [4478537.620000] hda: task_in_intr: status=0x49 
> { DriveReady DataRequest Error }
> May 11 18:13:05 seamus kernel: [4478537.620000] hda: task_in_intr: error=0x04 
> { DriveStatusError }
> May 11 18:13:08 seamus kernel: [4478537.620000] ide: failed opcode was: uknown
> 
> 
> What's really annoying is that the computer has suddenly decided it will no 
> longer boot from the CD-ROM drive, even though I have the BIOS set to boot 
> from CD-ROM, then the hard drive.  Thus, I can't boot from the installation 
> media to attempt a system rescue there.  I've tried booting using recovery 
> mode from GRUB, but I only get the same issues.
> 
> Any thoughts?  This is a fairly old computer (five years old) so I guess all 
> manner of horrors, including a failed motherboard, are possible.
> 
> 
Got a floppy on that, try a Smart Boot Disk to get the CD to boot.
http://linux.simple.be/tools/sbm

I'd also recommend if you have the hardware, put the drive into another 
machine as a 2nd drive and run more in depth tools from a working OS.
Maybe try to read the S.M.A.R.T status too (if the drive has that).

Hopefully that'll get you started - Alex