Arch Linux

Deuterium

Member

Registered: 2009-09-26

Posts: 50

boot fails after using archiso

Hello all,

I am about to switch computers, and so i decided i would try to use archiso to make a bootable cd to install Arch on the new pc.  I followed the wiki, but when i got down to the 'make all' part it got part way through, and then started reporting 'sed: command not found' (i have sed installed), and then started complaining about some directory not found in the 'work' (should be made automatically right?).

Anyways, i tried it again later but then it had issues saying 'read-only filesystem', Ive got this error a few times, and normally i reboot, the filesystem checking complains, and i have to run 'fsck' and say yes to all the errors (to allow fsck to fix them).  Then after rebooting it works fine.  This time is different though, i get a whole lot more errors, and the kernel panics (Kernel panic - not syncing: Attempted to kill init!) followed by a short call trace.  Also, the caps-lock light flashes.. and the system stops, needing a hard reboot.

I dont have much experience in this area, and would really like some help! Take pity, I am reduced to using windows because it wont boot o.O

So if someone knows what i should do (though i dont really have any opportunity to type in commands) I would be very grateful

Im not sure if this should be in this forum but i wasnt sure were else to put it, feel free to move it.

PS. I run ext4 on my root partition, probably a bad idea, but once my system started having errors, i didnt/dont know how to convert to ext3..
reiserfs on /var partition, ext3 on /boot

Last edited by Deuterium (2010-02-01 08:01:09)

Deuterium

Member

Registered: 2009-09-26

Posts: 50

Re: boot fails after using archiso

Although I cannot test it right now, I think one possible solution would be boot up another live Linux distro and...? Perhaps use fsck then?  Any one want to build on that? I'll try it out asap.

Deuterium

Member

Registered: 2009-09-26

Posts: 50

Re: boot fails after using archiso

Okay, I can boot a live cd, i currently only have Backtrack available (a friend borrowed my other cd's).  I can access my other partitions (sda1-3) but not so with sda4 (the corrupted partition in question).

However running 'fsck /dev/sda4' (fsck version 1.38) keeps complaining about 'e2fsck: Bad magic number in super-block while trying to open /dev/sda4'.

My guess is that fsck is thinking sda4 is an ext2 filesystem but i cant seem to change it.. also, it may be that fsck is too old and i need a newer version, but i have googled and cant seem to find the place to get it!

If someone could perhaps post a link? also, i dont know what kind of package backtrack requires ...unless i have to build it from source...

Any help? Thanks