Topic: Damaged SME V7

[p-jones]

I have managed to screw up my V7 installation and it is all my fault. It does boot but not properly. I have no networking. When logging in as admin, it does a quick screen flash and drops me back to a login prompt. I can however login as root.

 I have been able to mount the entire drive and recover data using the LVM Howto in the wiki. (and the drive looks to be not too bad ). All the home folders and ibays are good and they are of the greatest interest to me.

I have had no issues recoveing the data, there is a lot of it and it is taking a while. I did find an ommission in the LVM Howto tho. !

My question is, "any way to force a reinstall/repair of the system." I have tried an upgrde from the CD to no avail.

I am not a linux guru.

Peter

[mmccarn]

What happens when you try to reinstall from CD?

[p-jones]

First time it went through, upgraded a few packages, ran post install script, asked for a new root password then sat a login screen. Rest as above.

Second and subsequent time, found no new rpms to upgrade, ran a post install script and sat at login script. Rest as above.

I subsequently ran a post-upgrade, reboot to no avail.

This is where I have left it.  Built a temp server, mounted this drive and am recovering the data, leaving the drive intact and unadulterated on the off chance there is a chance of a full recovery.

[thomasch]

I have managed to screw up my V7 installation and it is all my fault. It does boot but not properly. I have no networking.

Peter,

Can you spesifically tell us how you 'screw up' you SME ? Maybe someone here can help you to reverse back the last installation/configuration.

Also you can check error in /var/log/messages dan /var/log/dmesg

In case of custom-template config damage you can try to delete all content in /etc/e-smith/template-custom
(backup first!).
Then run signal-event post-upgrade; signal-event reboot

Last chance is to force install SMEserver base packages. (can't help you in this case).


thomas

[p-jones]

I screwed it up by applying the latest patches then running the command to update contribs for utf8.
That did not repair my admin panel and I used the software installer to remove a dubious package. (I forget which one now, there were many.  I think it was email queue management.)

This all sounds pretty basic BUT, It is a server I have used to trial things with - very dirty. (MY FAULT)
Over the last couple of weeks there have been several power interuptions which have compromised the integrity of the only hard disk in the system. I did not check that before updating (MY FAULT) and my backups were not as good as I thought.

It would be awesome if I can recover from this, but not the end of the earth if I cannot. I definitely deserve what I got !!

[thomasch]

Peter,

Well, I guess your base packages damaged.

First, let's check the log of what did yum erased :

 

Code: [Select]

cat /var/log/yum/yum.log |grep Erased
Can you show us the output ?

A Shortcut :

Maybe you can try to reinstall base packages : (you need a network connection to do this though) :
 
 

Code: [Select]

yum --disablerepo=* --enablerepo=smeos --enablerepo=smeupdates install e-smith* smeserver*

thomas

[p-jones]

Thomas, thanks for attempting to assist. Currently the drive is mounted into another SME Server and has about 12 hours to complete recovering data so I will be very keen to try your suggestions when finished.

I am reluctant to intervene at this point - I learnt the hard way a long time, not to disturb a recovery when winning, it may be the only opportunity I get !!