[plug] To any XFS experts out there ... help save my root partition!

[Harry McNally]

On Tue, 16 Jul 2002 22:04:38 +0800 "Cameron Patrick" <cp at chem.com.au> wrote:

> G'day plug,

> Does anyone here know how to rescue an XFS partition?

'Lo again Cameron,

I just ran up the Computer Angels machine I have here. We are now using the 2.4
kernel and ext3. man mount confirmed XFS support.

I suspect you could write the two debian (rescue and root) 2.4bf floppies, boot
with those, and mount the partition on /mnt to see if it is recoverable.

I don't remember the utility to make these from doze anymore, hang on,
/debian/dists/woody/main/disks-i386/3.0.23-2002-05-21/dosutils/rawrite2.exe
that's it. In linux I use:
dd if=/your/dir/rescue.bin of=/dev/fd0
dd if=/your/dir/root.bin of=/dev/fd0
much easier to remember ;)

The files are at any reputable debian mirror:

/debian/dists/woody/main/disks-i386/3.0.23-2002-05-21/images-1.44/bf2.4/rescue.
bin and
/debian/dists/woody/main/disks-i386/3.0.23-2002-05-21/images-1.44/bf2.4/root.bin

Use rescue, then root, then when the first install menu appears, hit <F2> then
<Enter> to get a very painful shell. Try:# mount -t xfs /dev/hdaX /mnt
where X defines your root partition. If uncertain:
# fdisk -l
will show which partition you have.

I did an:
apt-cache search xfsprogs and got: 

xfsdump - Administrative utilities for the XFS filesystem
xfslibs-dev - XFS filesystem-specific static libraries and headers.
xfsprogs - Utilities for managing the XFS filesystem
xfsprogs-bf - A stripped-down versions of xfsprogs, for boot-floppies

Getting xfsprogs-bf on a floppy might let you carefully tinker with the fs but
after that I'm lost. Don't know anything about xfs. If you like I could install
xfsprogs-bf and email the man pages off list but I guess you need to get them
onto a floppy yourself somehow anyway. Unless they are on the bf2.4 images
already, don't know. 

As a gentoo whiz, you probably know all this stuff but there you go.

HTH and good luck
Harry

-- 
linux.conf.au 2003		The Australian Linux Technical Conference
http://linux.conf.au/		22-25 January 2003 in Perth, Western Australia

Are you a computer angel?	http://www.ca.asn.au/