[Solved] ext2 > ext3, boot trouble

San2ban · 2010-10-14 17:28:34

Dear Archers

At the time of my installation, of ARCHLINUX 2010.05 X86_64, I had selected auto-prepare hard disk. It had made my sda1, 2, 3, 4 as ext2.
My hands were itching to chanfe this to ext3. Today, after some googling, I used "tune2fs'" and changed the partitions to ext3. Also did "e2fsck -fDC0.
When I rebooted, I get a error " can't access tty, job cannot be done, goodluck'
Also, in command line, cursor is at [ramfs/]#

Is this a problem with the initramfs?.

Reloaded Arch Linux. Thanks to all for all the support

Last edited by San2ban (2010-12-04 15:39:00)

Knute · 2010-10-14 22:31:51

At a first guess, I would say that after the conversion, you did not reconfigure your kernel or your initramfs.

I'm not sure what the exact option is that you need for ext3, but I have a reiserfs partition in my setup and my /etc/mkinitcpio.conf has reiserfs in the MODULES section.

If you run mkinitcpio -M from the command line it will show you the modules that it autodetects. In my case ext2 and reiserfs were included in that list. So if I were to guess, you would need to boot to a live cd, and mount your system partitions, then chroot into that new system, and set up the environment, then change your mkinitcpio.conf to add the ext3 into your modules, then run mkinitcpio so that it can then rebuild your kernel and the initramfs so that it will recognize your new ext3 partitions.

I have used gentoo in the past, so if you are unsure about how to do any of this, the gentoo installation docs are good for this kind of setup.

I'm not sure what else to suggest, as you rebooted before setting up the kernel and such.

HTH

San2ban · 2010-10-15 13:50:29

I understand that I have s......d up my system. I tried to boot through "ArchLinux fallback' nad do 'mkinitcpio. No use. it says /file system read only.

Booting through live CD is useless, as it says 'disk; read error'. Sure, no problem with HDD,

Any suggestion is greatly appreciated.

San2ban · 2010-10-15 13:51:24

I understand that I have s......d up my system. I tried to boot through "ArchLinux fallback' nad do 'mkinitcpio. No use. it says /file system read only.

Booting through live CD is useless, as it says 'disk; read error'. Sure, no problem with HDD,

Any suggestion is greatly appreciated.

San2ban · 2010-10-15 17:21:34

When I boot "fallback", I am not allowed to edit the /etc/fstab file also. Says 'no permission', though logged on as root.
Reason I want edit fstab is, I dont see the /dev/sda1, 2, 3 listed in this file.

How to come out of this?

Knute · 2010-10-15 20:45:40

Ok, what you need to do is to boot to the live cd, then mount your filesystems.

Now, I'm not sure if the live cd that you are using are showing the drives as being hda or sda, that may be the issue.

Once you have figured that out, then you can make a /mnt/arch or whatever directory, and then mount your root partition to /mnt/arch, then mount your other 3 partitions to the appropriate places in the filesystem. So if you have a partition for /usr and one for /home and a swap partition, you would mount your /usr partition to /mnt/arch/usr. Mounting your /home partition you could do, but for operations such as this, it makes no difference as you will be logged in as root, so I don't bother with mounting /home, normally.

Ok, after you have mounted the system as described (hopefully I made it clear enough), you would issue the command:

chroot /mnt/arch /bin/bash

What this will do is actually open up the bash shell (I normally use zsh, but it doesn't matter what shell you use), and use the directory you specified as the new root.

Assuming that the live cd that you are using can handle ext3 partitions, you should be golden. Ummmm.... There are a couple more commands that gentoo uses to fully put you in that new shell.....

.... Yeah it's env-update... Not sure if arch has that or not, but the other ones were:

source /etc/profile
export PS1="(chroot) $PS1"

But anyway, after you have chrooted, you should be able to modify the appropriate files, and do the updates that were previously suggested.

HTH

San2ban · 2010-10-16 02:07:51

tHANKS FOR YOUR SUGGESTION, kNUTE.

At the moment, Live cd says "disk read error"
Can the HDD have developed some error?
Because, in "fallback", I see /dev/sda1, 2, 3 shown, when I give fdisk -l command.

Knute · 2010-10-16 13:31:23

Actually, that would suggest to me that the live cd that you are using is unable to read ext3 partition types.

What live cd are you using anyway?

San2ban · 2010-10-17 10:19:29

hello Knute
I have twolive cd, 2010.05, 2009.08. By live CD I mean ARCH ISO image.
I used 2009.08, since, I have given the 2010.05 to my friend.

Is this, then, not the live CD that you refer to?. Is there something else to be used?

San2ban · 2010-10-17 13:33:00

Is formatting the DD and re-installing the only option? I want to avoid this. Fallback is not helping me, it says 'read-only' for all files.
Live CD is not useful, Error 25: ' disk:read error'

My hands are already itching to reformat and re-install

theapodan · 2010-10-17 16:41:03

San2ban wrote:

Dear Archers
At the time of my installation, of ARCHLINUX 2010.05 X86_64, I had selected auto-prepare hard disk. It had made my sda1, 2, 3, 4 as ext2.
My hands were itching to chanfe this to ext3. Today, after some googling, I used "tune2fs'" and changed the partitions to ext3. Also did "e2fsck -fDC0.
When I rebooted, I get a error " can't access tty, job cannot be done, goodluck'
Also, in command line, cursor is at [ramfs/]#
Is this a problem with the initramfs?.

Never run fsck on a mounted filesystem, even one mounted ro.

Also, I've never done this conversion, but the process you describe doesn't jive with what man tune2fs suggests. I might imagine that your filesystem has been borked somehow, and you need to run a fsck on your root filesystem, with that filesystem UNMOUNTED. You'll have to do that from a livecd.

fsck.ext3 /dev/sda1

may be what you need.

The wiki is your friend.

San2ban · 2010-10-18 14:21:30

As I have already stated, Live CD is of no use, since I ger 'Error25: disk read error'
Fallback is of no use, since it is not allowing to edit any file.

Any other method

San2ban · 2010-10-19 17:38:16

Finally, I burnt one more ISO image of ARCHLINUX 2010.05 on another CD. Live CD is now working

Hello Knute
Your suggestion, chroot /mnt/arch /bin/bash is not working. It says /bin/bash not a directory

Hello Theapodan
I did as you suggested. It says /dev/sda1 clean.

I am still in my old position.
Any alternatives?

Knute · 2010-10-24 18:51:51

Ok. Did you mount your paritions before trying the chroot command?

In order for the chroot to work, you have to have the directory that you are chrooting to to actually exist, and the command (in this case the shell) that you want to run in the new root directory to be there as well.

Arch Linux

#1 2010-10-14 17:28:34

[Solved] ext2 > ext3, boot trouble

#2 2010-10-14 22:31:51

Re: [Solved] ext2 > ext3, boot trouble

#3 2010-10-15 13:50:29

Re: [Solved] ext2 > ext3, boot trouble

#4 2010-10-15 13:51:24

Re: [Solved] ext2 > ext3, boot trouble

#5 2010-10-15 17:21:34

Re: [Solved] ext2 > ext3, boot trouble

#6 2010-10-15 20:45:40

Re: [Solved] ext2 > ext3, boot trouble

#7 2010-10-16 02:07:51

Re: [Solved] ext2 > ext3, boot trouble

#8 2010-10-16 13:31:23

Re: [Solved] ext2 > ext3, boot trouble

#9 2010-10-17 10:19:29

Re: [Solved] ext2 > ext3, boot trouble

#10 2010-10-17 13:33:00

Re: [Solved] ext2 > ext3, boot trouble

#11 2010-10-17 16:41:03

Re: [Solved] ext2 > ext3, boot trouble

#12 2010-10-18 14:21:30

Re: [Solved] ext2 > ext3, boot trouble

#13 2010-10-19 17:38:16

Re: [Solved] ext2 > ext3, boot trouble

#14 2010-10-24 18:51:51

Re: [Solved] ext2 > ext3, boot trouble

Board footer