[kinda solved] All the system is down and I need my files badly!

Włóczymyśl · 2011-06-15 05:01:41

I'm using gnome and sometimes when the screen goes blank and you need to retype your password to restore it... well, sometimes it was blank for a while (about 5 seconds) so I was just wandering with my cursor for a while as it was like 30 seconds now... my cursor changed into this "you can type here" mode so I just typed my login, clicked enter and then the password and enter again... then it all went into "no move" state so I changed my display with ctrl+alt+F2 and rebooted the system. It didn't open gdm at all, I had just a terminal (now typing from my laptop). So I typed "gdm" but it went like this:

** (gdm-binary:1242: WARNING **: Failed to aquire org.gnome.DisplayManager: Connection ":1.13" is not allowed to own the service "org.gnome.DisplayManager" due to security policies in the configuration file

** (gdm-binary:1242: WARNING **: could not acquire name; bailing out

With sudo it was almost the same but shorter:

** (gdm-binary:1242: WARNING **: Failed to aquire org.gnome.DisplayManager

** (gdm-binary:1242: WARNING **: could not acquire name; bailing out

With "gnome-session" even shorter:

** (gnome-session:1256): WARNING **": Cannot open display:

So I thought I sould just reinstall all the gnome but I used -Syyu before that. Effect:

error: failed retrieving file core.db from mirrors.kernel.org : No address record

It failed to synchronize any database!

So if pacman and gnome are down in the same time... what could happen? All the configuration and home files are present on the disk (I guess).

At boot, it goes:

FATAL: Could not load /lib/modules/2.6.38-ARCH/modules.dep: No such file or directory

And I guess the important part of the story is that I'm ussing barriers=0 with ext4...

Last edited by Włóczymyśl (2011-06-16 11:28:26)

ewaller · 2011-06-15 05:15:46

Don't Panic

Go back to tty2 and login.
Are you using wireless or wired Ethernet ?
Can you see the files you are interested in from a CLI?
Are all the volumes mounted? (check using mount )
What is the output of ip addr ?? If that doesn't work, what is the output of ifconfig -a ??
Is there anything interesting in /var/log/messages.log (By interesting, I guess I mean ominous)

Pacman is there. Your network is not. Personally, I would reboot... but I won't twist your arm on that; it is your system.

Edit: the message to which I had responded said (paraphrasing) that he was afraid to reboot. I think that was edited away.

ewaller · 2011-06-15 05:20:56

I think you edited while I was typing. Either that, or it is time for me to go to bed.

Now it looks like you tried to update your kernel, but /boot was not mounted. I say this because you seem to be running 2.6.38, but the modules for 2.6.38 are not there. I bet the ones for 2.6.39 are. I also bet that your boot partition, which is mounted at /boot, has the 2.6.38 kernel. If you unmount /boot, and look at the /boot directory, I'll bet you find the 2.6.39 kernel and initrd.

Włóczymyśl · 2011-06-15 13:17:23

Yeah, I edited as I thought that it my carry some precious data and I can see it had. You see, boot is not mounted after the reboot and I can't boot it as it goes:

mount: unknown filesystem type 'ext2'

But yeah, I found 2.6.39 kernel at unmounted /boot directory by bsdtar but there is no /boot/grub/menu.lst

So now when you are right - what should I do?

litemotiv · 2011-06-15 13:25:38

It sounds like it's time to chroot and perform a full pacman update from there. If the problem persists, reinstall the kernel. If the problem still persists, reinstall grub.

ewaller · 2011-06-15 15:09:16

litemotiv wrote:

It sounds like it's time to chroot and perform a full pacman update from there. If the problem persists, reinstall the kernel. If the problem still persists, reinstall grub.

You could also try booting the system any way you can (livecd, usb), mount your root partition somewhere, mount your boot partition somewhere else (not at /boot on the root partition), and copy the files from your root partition's /boot to the boot partition.

Włóczymyśl · 2011-06-15 15:57:37

litemotiv wrote:

It sounds like it's time to chroot and perform a full pacman update from there. If the problem persists, reinstall the kernel. If the problem still persists, reinstall grub.

Well, I did the 1st and it was impossible to do so I did the 2nd and it was still bad (other errors thought) so I did the 1st again and it worked but the system was still not booting (yet other errors thought) so I did the 3rd and it still was bad... so I turned to this proposal:

ewaller wrote:

You could also try booting the system any way you can (livecd, usb), mount your root partition somewhere, mount your boot partition somewhere else (not at /boot on the root partition), and copy the files from your root partition's /boot to the boot partition.

but it didn't worked either... now I'm stuck with:

Root device '/dev/disk/by-uuid/xxxxxxxxxxxxxx' doesn't exist. Attempting to create it.
ERROR: Unable to determinate major/minor number of root device '/dev/disk/by-uuid/xxxxxxxxxxxx'.
You are being dropped to a recovery shell
    Type 'exit' to try and continue booting
/bin/sh: can't access tty; job control turned off

while booting. It's too much for me... ^^'

Edit: 'exit' didn't solve the situation of course.

Last edited by Włóczymyśl (2011-06-15 16:03:37)

litemotiv · 2011-06-15 16:08:44

It looks like the grub reinstall didn't go well, did you follow the wiki on reinstalling grub? https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/GR … stallation

You are probably close to getting your system back online though.

edit: a quick and dirty way might be to change the device to block naming like /dev/sdaX (replace X with partition number). Once you get the system booting you can change it back too uuid if you want.

Last edited by litemotiv (2011-06-15 16:15:18)

Włóczymyśl · 2011-06-15 16:58:29

litemotiv wrote:

It looks like the grub reinstall didn't go well, did you follow the wiki on reinstalling grub? https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/GR … stallation
You are probably close to getting your system back online though.
edit: a quick and dirty way might be to change the device to block naming like /dev/sdaX (replace X with partition number). Once you get the system booting you can change it back too uuid if you want.

I went the dirty way and then (after checking that it's not working without it) I reinstalled grub and then the kernel but there is still this "can't access tty" error, except that now it's "Root device '/dev/sda3' doesn't exist" as I changed both fstab and menu.lst to use /dev/sdaX. I'm maybe close but standing in place ;c... and yes, I went exactly with the wiki articles you sent me.

Last edited by Włóczymyśl (2011-06-15 17:08:02)

litemotiv · 2011-06-15 17:09:34

Ok, i'm not sure whether you are booting with a separate boot partition now or with /boot on your root partition, but be sure to check the root (hdx,x) line in your grub.cfg/menu.lst and whether sda3 is the right partition number.

If all else fails and you have your /home on a separate partition, you can choose to reinstall Arch and keep your home, but that should be a last resort since this has to be fixable.

Włóczymyśl · 2011-06-15 17:31:03

litemotiv wrote:

Ok, i'm not sure whether you are booting with a separate boot partition now or with /boot on your root partition, but be sure to check the root (hdx,x) line in your grub.cfg/menu.lst and whether sda3 is the right partition number.
If all else fails and you have your /home on a separate partition, you can choose to reinstall Arch and keep your home, but that should be a last resort since this has to be fixable.

I have separate both boot and home. Boot is (hd0,0) at /dev/sda1, swap at /dev/sda2 (it changed with some update so that's why there is no logical order), root at /dev/sda3 and home at /dev/sda4. Should menu.lst in /boot/grub have root with linux of grub syntax? I have linux /dev/sdaX there... but well, I will reinstall the system as I have to do some projects and I can't do them on laptop. Thanks for help!

litemotiv · 2011-06-15 17:45:56

Włóczymyśl wrote:

I have separate both boot and home. Boot is (hd0,0) at /dev/sda1, swap at /dev/sda2 (it changed with some update so that's why there is no logical order), root at /dev/sda3 and home at /dev/sda4. Should menu.lst in /boot/grub have root with linux of grub syntax? I have linux /dev/sdaX there... but well, I will reinstall the system as I have to do some projects and I can't do them on laptop. Thanks for help!

The root line needs a (hd) syntax, example:

title  Arch Linux
root (hd0,0)
kernel /vmlinuz26 root=/dev/sda3 ro
initrd /kernel26.img

Włóczymyśl · 2011-06-16 11:28:07

litemotiv wrote:

The root line needs a (hd) syntax, example:
title  Arch Linux
root (hd0,0)
kernel /vmlinuz26 root=/dev/sda3 ro
initrd /kernel26.img

So that probably was my mistake, I just left root as it was but during grub reinstall I gave him (hd0,0) coordinates so maybe it wasn't a reason why we couldn't figure the solution out... well, now I'm typing via newly installed system so it's too late for guessing, it wasn't painful at all and I have all my mails and bookmarks thanks to /home so I guess it's not that bad to just reinstall - took much less time to get everything as it was and back online. I would prefer to repair it as you said as it was really teaching experience for me but I need to learn now (exams time now) and I need my PC for that. Thanks again for all the help!

litemotiv · 2011-06-16 11:48:20

Glad you got your system back working Włóczymyśl, we'll just trying fixing it again the next time something goes horribly wrong.

Arch Linux

#1 2011-06-15 05:01:41

[kinda solved] All the system is down and I need my files badly!

#2 2011-06-15 05:15:46

Re: [kinda solved] All the system is down and I need my files badly!

#3 2011-06-15 05:20:56

Re: [kinda solved] All the system is down and I need my files badly!

#4 2011-06-15 13:17:23

Re: [kinda solved] All the system is down and I need my files badly!

#5 2011-06-15 13:25:38

Re: [kinda solved] All the system is down and I need my files badly!

#6 2011-06-15 15:09:16

Re: [kinda solved] All the system is down and I need my files badly!

#7 2011-06-15 15:57:37

Re: [kinda solved] All the system is down and I need my files badly!

#8 2011-06-15 16:08:44

Re: [kinda solved] All the system is down and I need my files badly!

#9 2011-06-15 16:58:29

Re: [kinda solved] All the system is down and I need my files badly!

#10 2011-06-15 17:09:34

Re: [kinda solved] All the system is down and I need my files badly!

#11 2011-06-15 17:31:03

Re: [kinda solved] All the system is down and I need my files badly!

#12 2011-06-15 17:45:56

Re: [kinda solved] All the system is down and I need my files badly!

#13 2011-06-16 11:28:07

Re: [kinda solved] All the system is down and I need my files badly!

#14 2011-06-16 11:48:20

Re: [kinda solved] All the system is down and I need my files badly!

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