[plug] Recover filesystem after disk problems

[Steve Baker]

Hi,

A linux box (SuSE 6.4) here crashed yesterday with a disk problem, and
naturally enough I don't have a backup.  There are 2 hdd's in the box, and
the problem is in accessing blocks in only one partition on the second disk.
Problem is that it's the /usr partition, so the system will not boot
properly.

I have booted from the install CD, and running a shell from there I have
been able to copy the contents of the other filesystems on that disk onto
the first disk, but I cannot get anything from /usr.  I have run the
'badblocks' utility which gives me 3 sets of 4-block clusters that it
considers bad.

Question is:  What can I do to recover the filesystem?  I know that I will
probably lose whatever files are using those bad blocks, but can I still get
_most_ of the filesystem back?  I have tried using dd to get data from
around the damaged area, but using 'if=/dev/hdb1 skip=...' doesn't work
since it stills reads from the beginning of the device.  The fs is reiserfs.

Regards,
Steve
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