From owner-freebsd-questions Mon Feb 23 12:18:53 1998 Return-Path: Received: (from majordom@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id MAA04341 for freebsd-questions-outgoing; Mon, 23 Feb 1998 12:18:53 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG) Received: from mirage.skypoint.com (mirage.skypoint.com [199.86.32.7]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id MAA04249 for ; Mon, 23 Feb 1998 12:17:37 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from hirsh@mirage.skypoint.com) Received: (from hirsh@localhost) by mirage.skypoint.com (8.8.7/8.8.5) id OAA09515 for questions@freebsd.org; Mon, 23 Feb 1998 14:17:20 -0600 (CST) From: Roger P Johnson Message-Id: <199802232017.OAA09515@mirage.skypoint.com> Subject: corrupt root files system; How to boot from CDROM for fixing ? To: questions@FreeBSD.ORG Date: Mon, 23 Feb 1998 14:17:20 -0600 (CST) X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4ME+ PL32 (25)] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG Hi and help! My root file system is corrupted. Something happend during the night, and when I came in this morning the system booted up into the /stand/sysinstall program. Rebooting, here is what I get: changing root device to sd0a WARNING: / was not properly dismounted. exec /sbin/init: error 20 exec /sbin/oinit: error 20 exec /sbin/init.bak: error 20 /stand/sysinstall running as init Ok. I try the fixit option. fixit cannot mount the fixit floppy nor the 2nd cdrom. Apprarently sysinstall has mounted the root device only, and the root partition looks pretty shaky and I cannot change anything to write mode. I have no mount and umount commands to mount the other partions. I ran fsck -n over all my partions and they only complain about not being unmounted properly (all right!). Running fsck -n over the root partion yields all kinds of inodes missing and other ugly junk. System: DEC Venturis FX5100 (100 MHz Pentium) Adaptec 2940 SCSI ID 0: Seagate Hawk 2XL ST32151N SCSI ID 2: Tanberg Tape Drive SCSI ID 3: Plextor 4Plex Plus 4xCDROM FreeBSD 2.2.2 OK. Here are a couple of questions on how to fix this: Q1: How do I boot from the bootable cdrom ? I did this once when I didn't want to, before FBSD was installed on the hard drive. I have tried all kinds of combonations, trying to boot from the cdrom to no avail. [By combonations, I mean trying: typing "3:cd0(0,a)kernel" or "3:cd0/kernel" or "3:cd0" at the boot prompt also setting the BIOS to boot from cdrom then hard disk and enable booting from cd-rom in the Adaptec setup] This way, I could mount the the other partions, make a backup copy of them, and then do a restore of the root partion from a prior backup tape of the root filesystem; reboot and wholla ? Q2: Can I do a re-install of FBSD, using the old partion table and just install the core stuff on /, /usr and /var ? Will the installation overwrite my other partions on /home, /u, /source and will they be lost or just as they where ? Q3: Can I cpio the whole partions to tape, re-install using the exact same filesystem sizes and restore the partion from the tape ? I am having a hard time cpio'ing say /dev/sd0s2e to tape, if this is even possible. I am missing dump also. Any help is much apprieciated, Roger To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message