soliciting advice for best way to re-install after crash

lyonsd

I was doing an emerge on my laptop and I didn't know it, but it lost connection with my AC adapter, the battery discharged, and it crashed.

The system would not boot. Superblock problems on /dev/hda4 (which is my root device). It wouldn't even fsck. However, I could boot the install CD and fsck it. I can even mount it. But I can't boot from it.

I'm thinking I'm going to need to recreate the filesystem with newfs. If there's anything else I can try, let me know.

I don't have a backup, but I since I can mount the filesystem I will be able to back it up.

So once I get the filesystem recreated, and my backup restored, I will need to rebuild everything. Since there seems to be a lot missing from my filesystem. My lost+found directory contains 2500 entries from fsck. Is there a way that can be restored?

Will I need to re-bootstrap it? Or will a "emerge -e world" rebuild everything?

Thanks.
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Dave

IQgryn · l33t Joined: 05 Sep 2005 Posts: 764 Location: WI, USA

Depending on what's missing, an emerge -e world will probably be enough. If you're unlucky enough that portage is broken, then you'll probably have to start from a stage3 package (make sure you back up your portage configuration first).

As far as restoring the files goes, you'll have to do that by hand. Usually any directories inside lost+found will still have their contents intact, but the directory's name will be changed, as will any file directly under lost+found.

lyonsd · Posted: Wed Mar 28, 2007 2:44 pm Post subject:

lost+found contents:

IQgryn · l33t Joined: 05 Sep 2005 Posts: 764 Location: WI, USA

No, it does not. You can use the file command to sort it out to some degree, but it's still not going to be easy. You can afford to take your time, though...they're not going anywhere.

If you need a file right away and suspect it's in there, you can grep for a string that would be in the file. Openoffice files will have the same type as zip files (since they're zipped), but have a particular structure inside that makes them easily identified. In that case you could unzip then and then use grep (or just try opening the file with Openoffice).

The odds are that most of those files won't be needed, but you have no way of knowing which ones you need until you go through it. If you have any questions about how to find a certain type of file, I may be able to help.