Topic: Hardware Failure

[nicholasaa]

I have a major hardware failure. So i took the Drive out of the computer it was in and put it into a External USB enclosere. I want to read the files from it. Itried mounting it as ext3 but that just shows me some image files and i know there is a lot more on it. What FS type do i need to mount it as to see the files on it? OR is there something more that i need to do ?

[Boris]

There are three partitions on the drive by default. One is (100MB) is boot partition that you found, with kernel images and grub menu. It mounts normally to /boot folder. You don't need it for data rescue.
The main partition there data is the biggest and third partition for swap memory.
Try to mount the second partition to the temporary folder and copy data from it.

[nicholasaa]

I have tried mounting it and it says wrong FS type and i i leave fs type blan it says i need one. I used INSERT Linux to find out it's fs type was LVM2. Is that the FS type that i should mount as? When i try Ext3 is says Wong FS type.

[byte]

Have a look at this:

http://wiki.contribs.org/Recovering_SME_Server_with_lvm_drives

If you installed without using the boot parameter "nolvm" then your drives will be lvm and not ext3.

[Confucius]

If you installed with using the boot parameter "nolvm" then your drives will be lvm and not ext3.

I guess the correct word would have been "without". Got me confused for a moment.

[nicholasaa]

I went through the link you sent and i was good stuff but it assumed that you were starting an raid aray with no existing one. I need to get to it while keeping my curernt one going. THe part where it starts to differ is when the have you run pvs that shows you the physical volumes. It should show the one i am trying to start and the existing one. but it only show the existing one. and when i try to acitvate all volumes it says this.

~]# vgchange main -a n
  Can't deactivate volume group "main" with 2 open logical volume(s)
 
So how do i get it to activate both volumes ?

So i need to include active volumes in the mdadm -AR part or just the ones i want to add.

[nicholasaa]

So it appers that it is not detecting the Physical volumes after i build them with "mdadm -AR /dev/md8 /dev/sda2" is there a way to foce discovery of the md device ?

[byte]

I guess the correct word would have been "without". Got me confused for a moment.

Yes you guess right  - Thanks.

[byte]

So it appers that it is not detecting the Physical volumes after i build them with "mdadm -AR /dev/md8 /dev/sda2" is there a way to foce discovery of the md device ?

Can you maybe copy and paste exactly what you are seeing as I'm not sure where you got up to and what state you are now in ?! and your doing this in an external device ?

[nicholasaa]

Yes i took the old hard drive a put it into a USB Enclosure. SO from the begining this is what is happening.

[root@altrogcoturret ~]# mdadm -E /dev/sda1
/dev/sda1:
          Magic : a92b4efc
        Version : 00.90.00
           UUID : facfe2d3:65d22c65:c50eb6df:7e08ddc5
  Creation Time : Wed Sep 12 20:14:52 2007
     Raid Level : raid1
    Device Size : 104320 (101.88 MiB 106.82 MB)
   Raid Devices : 2
  Total Devices : 1
Preferred Minor : 1

    Update Time : Mon Nov 26 08:15:23 2007
          State : clean
 Active Devices : 1
Working Devices : 1
 Failed Devices : 1
  Spare Devices : 0
       Checksum : db1a48b4 - correct
         Events : 0.696


      Number   Major   Minor   RaidDevice State
this     0       3        1        0      active sync   /dev/hda1
   0     0       3        1        0      active sync   /dev/hda1
   1     1       0        0        1      faulty removed
[root@altrogcoturret ~]# cat /proc/mdstat
Personalities : [raid1]
md1 : active raid1 hda1[0]
      104320 blocks [2/1] [U_]

md2 : active raid1 hda2[0]
      38957504 blocks [2/1] [U_]

unused devices: <none>
[root@altrogcoturret ~]# mdadm -AR /dev/md8 /dev/sda2
mdadm: /dev/md8 has been started with 1 drive (out of 2).
[root@altrogcoturret ~]# cat /proc/mdstat
Personalities : [raid1]
md8 : active raid1 sda2[0]
      78067776 blocks [2/1] [U_]

md1 : active raid1 hda1[0]
      104320 blocks [2/1] [U_]

md2 : active raid1 hda2[0]
      38957504 blocks [2/1] [U_]

unused devices: <none>
[root@altrogcoturret ~]# pvs
  PV         VG   Fmt  Attr PSize  PFree
  /dev/md2   main lvm2 a-   37.12G 32.00M
[root@altrogcoturret ~]# vgchange main -a n
  Can't deactivate volume group "main" with 2 open logical volume(s)
[root@altrogcoturret ~]#


That is everything and where we end.

[byte]

[root@altrogcoturret ~]# vgchange main -a n
  Can't deactivate volume group "main" with 2 open logical volume(s)
[root@altrogcoturret ~]#

What do you see if you skip that part and use:

vgchange main -a y

then follow the rest of the document ?

[nicholasaa]

when i contimue with the process by mounting with

user@user-desktop:~$ mount /dev/main/root /mnt/oldsmeserver/
user@user-desktop:~$

It just mounts the existing file system not the one on the external drive. I checked for the files i needed and they were not there. So it still didn't work.  any other idea's

[byte]

What do you see if you do:

fdisk -l /dev/sda

?

Are the /dev/hda1/2 your current system raid your trying to load the recovery on from the external device ?

[nicholasaa]

When i type what you ask this is what i get

[root@altrogcoturret ~]# fdisk -l /dev/sda

Disk /dev/sda: 60.6 GB, 60653093888 bytes
64 heads, 32 sectors/track, 57843 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 2048 * 512 = 1048576 bytes

Disk /dev/sda doesn't contain a valid partition table
[root@altrogcoturret ~]#


yes hda1/2 are the current Raid array i am tring to load another raid aray from a External USB brive.So that i can recover files from the Old Array that is on the USB Drive

[byte]

[root@altrogcoturret ~]# mdadm -E /dev/sda1
/dev/sda1:
          Magic : a92b4efc
        Version : 00.90.00
           UUID : facfe2d3:65d22c65:c50eb6df:7e08ddc5
  Creation Time : Wed Sep 12 20:14:52 2007
     Raid Level : raid1
    Device Size : 104320 (101.88 MiB 106.82 MB)
[..]

What do you see with  /dev/sda2 in that command. What OS you got the external drive on ?