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#328384 - 01/01/2010 23:37 Help! Disk drive error, existing information in FAQ not working.
tfabris
carpal tunnel

Registered: 20/12/1999
Posts: 31594
Loc: Seattle, WA
Player received "Sigkill Error" on the screen during a synch. Emplode crashed. (don't know which of the two things above precipitated the other. I'm guessing it was sigkill->emplode.

After player reboot, it said No Hard Disk Found Contact Support.

I opened the player and fiddled with the cables. Maybe they just needed reseating.

Player boots fine now and the hard disk is detected. Player software is entered correctly and comes up at "End of Playlist" and it behaves as though it has lost its playlists and has lost its config.ini (no settings there).

Surfing its shell prompt with the serial connection, it seems to think it's got a hard disk, but there's nothing on the important parts (the music partition) and it refuses to list the /drive0 partition. It's behaving as though that partition got corrupted during that failed synch.

I tried a few of the bits in the FAQ including the fsck.ext2 -fay -b 32768 /dev/hda4 thing. It kept giving me strange errors.

Is there any chance I can recover this partition?

Full serial log file attached.


Attachments
debug.txt (159 downloads)

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Tony Fabris

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#328386 - 02/01/2010 03:33 Re: Help! Disk drive error, existing information in FAQ not working. [Re: tfabris]
mlord
carpal tunnel

Registered: 29/08/2000
Posts: 14491
Loc: Canada
DON'T PANIC !

The music partition is /dev/hda5 not hda4.

-ml


Edited by mlord (02/01/2010 12:07)

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#328387 - 02/01/2010 06:30 Re: Help! Disk drive error, existing information in FAQ not working. [Re: mlord]
Roger
carpal tunnel

Registered: 18/01/2000
Posts: 5683
Loc: London, UK
Unless Tony's got custom partitioning, the music partition is definitely hda4.
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-- roger

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#328388 - 02/01/2010 10:13 Re: Help! Disk drive error, existing information in FAQ not working. [Re: Roger]
peter
carpal tunnel

Registered: 13/07/2000
Posts: 4180
Loc: Cambridge, England
The partition won't mount, that's why /drive0 is empty. The primary superblock is corrupt, and using the "-b NNNNN" option is the only way to bring the filesystem back.

The question is, what to use for NNNNN, i.e. where to look for the backup superblock. I suggest trying 24576, 24577, 98304, and 98305. (Those numbers are the first and second blocks in the third block group, for the common blocks-per-group values 8192 and 32768.)

Oh, and while you're there, we ought to check that your partition table is sane.

That is,
Code:
fdisk -l /dev/hda
swapon /swapfile
fsck -fay -b 24576 /dev/hda4
fsck -fay -b 24577 /dev/hda4
fsck -fay -b 98304 /dev/hda4
fsck -fay -b 98305 /dev/hda4

but stop, and report back here the first time any of those fscks does anything other than come back immediately with the "Bad magic number in super-block while trying to open /dev/hda4" error, don't carry on issuing the other fscks.

Peter

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#328389 - 02/01/2010 12:14 Re: Help! Disk drive error, existing information in FAQ not working. [Re: peter]
mlord
carpal tunnel

Registered: 29/08/2000
Posts: 14491
Loc: Canada
Originally Posted By: Tony's empeg
EXT2-fs: ide0(3,4): couldn't mount because of unsupported optional features.
...
fsck.ext2: Filesystem revision too high while trying to open /dev/hda4
The filesystem revision is apparently too high for this version of e2fsck.

The filesystem appears to be present, but for some reason has a modern flag (eg. the "has journal (ext3)" flag) set on it.

Did you create this filesystem on a PC, in in the empeg?

Or perhaps this is simply more bit corruption in the superblock.


Edited by mlord (02/01/2010 12:15)

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#328390 - 02/01/2010 12:48 Re: Help! Disk drive error, existing information in FAQ not working. [Re: mlord]
mlord
carpal tunnel

Registered: 29/08/2000
Posts: 14491
Loc: Canada
I just experimented here, and this works on one of my empegs:

e2fsck -b 32768 /dev/hda4

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#328391 - 02/01/2010 21:39 Re: Help! Disk drive error, existing information in FAQ not working. [Re: mlord]
tfabris
carpal tunnel

Registered: 20/12/1999
Posts: 31594
Loc: Seattle, WA
Originally Posted By: mlord
Did you create this filesystem on a PC, in in the empeg?


I'm reasonably sure it was the regular builder.
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Tony Fabris

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#328392 - 02/01/2010 22:42 Re: Help! Disk drive error, existing information in FAQ not working. [Re: mlord]
tfabris
carpal tunnel

Registered: 20/12/1999
Posts: 31594
Loc: Seattle, WA
Originally Posted By: mlord
I just experimented here, and this works on one of my empegs:
e2fsck -b 32768 /dev/hda4


empeg:/empeg/bin# e2fsck -b 32768 /dev/hda4
bash: e2fsck: command not found
empeg:/empeg/bin#
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Tony Fabris

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#328398 - 03/01/2010 02:58 Re: Help! Disk drive error, existing information in FAQ not working. [Re: tfabris]
mlord
carpal tunnel

Registered: 29/08/2000
Posts: 14491
Loc: Canada
Well, whatever the name is then. Probably This:

fsck.ext2 -b 32768 /dev/hda4


Edited by mlord (03/01/2010 03:01)

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#328403 - 03/01/2010 09:48 Re: Help! Disk drive error, existing information in FAQ not working. [Re: mlord]
peter
carpal tunnel

Registered: 13/07/2000
Posts: 4180
Loc: Cambridge, England
Originally Posted By: mlord
fsck.ext2 -b 32768 /dev/hda4

But in Tony's original serial log, you can see him trying that: "Bad magic number in super-block while trying to open /dev/hda4". Our mission now has become either finding yet another backup superblock, or figuring out why fsck isn't finding the 32768 one where it thinks it should be.

Peter

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#328414 - 04/01/2010 02:05 Re: Help! Disk drive error, existing information in FAQ not working. [Re: peter]
tfabris
carpal tunnel

Registered: 20/12/1999
Posts: 31594
Loc: Seattle, WA
Originally Posted By: peter
Originally Posted By: mlord
fsck.ext2 -b 32768 /dev/hda4
Our mission now has become either finding yet another backup superblock, or figuring out why fsck isn't finding the 32768 one where it thinks it should be.


Trying the commands you gave earlier in the thread, this one...

Code:
fsck -fay -b 24577 /dev/hda4


Seems to have hit something useful.

Code:
empeg:/empeg/bin# fsck -fay -b 24577 /dev/hda4
Parallelizing fsck version 1.19 (13-Jul-2000)
e2fsck 1.19, 13-Jul-2000 for EXT2 FS 0.5b, 95/08/09
ext2fs_check_if_mount: No such file or directory while determining whether /dev/
hda4 is mounted.
Pass 1: Checking inodes, blocks, and sizes


And now it seems to be taking a long time. Will report back with additional results when it gets past this bit.
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Tony Fabris

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#328419 - 04/01/2010 03:13 Re: Help! Disk drive error, existing information in FAQ not working. [Re: tfabris]
tfabris
carpal tunnel

Registered: 20/12/1999
Posts: 31594
Loc: Seattle, WA
That seems to have done something useful. I appear to have my partition back and my playlists back. Thank you so much, you guys.

I have updated the relevant FAQ entry. Let me know if my instructions there are correct.
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Tony Fabris

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#328424 - 04/01/2010 12:19 Re: Help! Disk drive error, existing information in FAQ not working. [Re: tfabris]
peter
carpal tunnel

Registered: 13/07/2000
Posts: 4180
Loc: Cambridge, England
Originally Posted By: tfabris
Let me know if my instructions there are correct.

Looks right to me. Your filesystem was formatted with 8192 blocks per group, which is certainly not the default in modern e2fsprogs for filesystems that big, but of course the builder images will be using a really, really old version.

Peter

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#328432 - 04/01/2010 16:50 Re: Help! Disk drive error, existing information in FAQ not working. [Re: peter]
tfabris
carpal tunnel

Registered: 20/12/1999
Posts: 31594
Loc: Seattle, WA
Excellent.

I didn't do these commands in the procedure...

swapoff /swapfile
sync

Is that a problem?
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Tony Fabris

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#328433 - 04/01/2010 16:56 Re: Help! Disk drive error, existing information in FAQ not working. [Re: tfabris]
peter
carpal tunnel

Registered: 13/07/2000
Posts: 4180
Loc: Cambridge, England
Originally Posted By: tfabris
I didn't do these commands in the procedure...

swapoff /swapfile
sync

Is that a problem?

The only potential problem would be leaving the swapfile in an inconsistent state for next time (assuming fsck syncs all its own changes, which it jolly well ought to do). If from the shell you do "swapon /swapfile" and then "swapoff /swapfile" and get no errors, everything is fine. And if everything were not fine, the worst that could happen is that you'd need to run mkswap.

Peter

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#328447 - 04/01/2010 22:25 Re: Help! Disk drive error, existing information in FAQ not working. [Re: peter]
tfabris
carpal tunnel

Registered: 20/12/1999
Posts: 31594
Loc: Seattle, WA
Thanks! smile
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Tony Fabris

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