Re: Booting Problem After Power Loss (fsck)?

2004-02-20 Thread Rishi Chopra
Good news and bad news:

Good News: System seems to have recovered.  Booting into single user 
mode and running fsck worked great for / and /var, but did nothing for 
my /usr partition with all my data.  After letting fsck run on my /usr 
partition for 4 days, the raid controller appeared to stall and the 
machine did not return to a prompt.  Regular boot (multi-user mode) 
somehow worked where it would not work before, and background fsck on 
the /usr partition eventually ended.  The system is now up and 
reachable, which is all I care about.

Bad News: No one who read my last message offered to help.  I suppose 
you can draw your own conclusions about the community-like nature of 
FreeBSD use in the Bay Area (home to UC Berkeley, FreeBSD Mall, and 
birthplace of the FreeBSD movement.)

--
Rishi Chopra
http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~rchopra
Rishi Chopra wrote:
I do not have the FIX-IT CD or another FreeBSD machine.

Is there another fellow FreeBSD'er in the Bay Area, CA that can 
volunteer to help me troubleshoot the card as described below (e.g. plug 
in the card and break to debugger to gather info)?  I can drive over to 
your place or you can come over to my house (directions on my homepage).

If it helps, my perspective is that meeting up is totally positve and 
the only thing left keeping me involved with computing - allow me to 
explain:

The server was totally idle when the power was cut, and I didn't make 
any changes while the server was down.  I've seen some crazy things 
working on computers before (I can show you a list, post one to the 
newsgroup, or if you're curious you can try searching the google groups 
link on my homepage.)  This would by far have to the most stubborn, 
underhanded, mean, nasty and implausable error I've ever come accross.

I could really use some help getting the filesytem up again; my heart 
can't take another failure like this, and I'm ready to give up computers 
(recreationally and professionally) if I can't get this problem fixed. I 
had just finished recovering from a 2 year reconsolidation of life and 
data (a 75GXP/Raid-0 failure and data loss occurred while I was studying 
at UC Berkeley and triggered a very nasty chain of events culminating in 
this problem.)  I can't handle going through another data consolidation; 
recovering from a recent thyroid removal and a 12-hour neck 
dissection/removal is a full-time affair, and the 30 some-odd staples in 
my neck greatly limit my ability to sit at the computer.

Looks like the important thing is for me to make a new friend in the 
FreeBSD community and a new start on computing, or bid y'all adieu.

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Re: Booting Problem After Power Loss (fsck)?

2004-02-09 Thread Ion-Mihai Tetcu
On Sun, 08 Feb 2004 21:12:51 -0800
Rishi Chopra [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

 Here's a summary of my problem so far:
 
 Server was idle (e.g. absolutely no processes running aside from
 csh, ttyv0 and ps) when power was cut; server reports a problem mounting 
 /usr partition upon reboot.
 
 I have since tried the following:
 
 (1) Booted into single-user mode and ran 'fsck' - the latest output to 
 the terminal says:
 
  FILE SYSTEM MARKED CLEAN 
  /dev/da0s1e
  Last Mounted on /usr
  Phase 1 - check blocks and sizes
 
 After letting the system 'do its thing' for 5+ days, the output did not 
 change.
 
 (2) I tried an 'fsck -p' and got the following message:
 
 /dev/da0s1a: 1128 files, 36058 used, 47059 free (261 frags, 58771 
 blocks, 0.1% fragmentations)

Do you get the prompt back ? Try fsck -p on / then on /var /tmp and last
/usr. At least you will know what partitions are ok. Better yet I
suggest you boot from the second aka Fixit CD and run fsck from there;
you fsck binary may be broken. Also boot verbose (I don't know if
safe-mode applies to SCSI, but if it does, try that also).

 The display has been stuck with that same output for countless hours now.

Do you have disk activity when fsck seems to be stuck ?

 Questions I have:
 
 (1) Have I suffered a total loss or is this still some way to revover my 
 filesystem?  After suffering a similar loss with a hardware raid-0 
 failure under win2k, I was assuming the FreeBSD setup would be more 
 durable.  I would hate to walk away thinking that a simple power loss 
 could wipe out a freebsd server under nothing more than one terminal login.

Generally this doesn't happen. From my experience, it happens if either
there are problems with the disk access infrastructure (a la timeouts,
etc. on ata) or something bad elsewhere in the kernel.

 (2) Why would a simple fsck of the filesystem not work in my case?

If you have the kernel with 
options DDB
options BREAK_TO_DEBUGGER

and no disk activity I suggest that you break to debugger hitting
Ctrl+Esc and try to gather some info from there. Note that in case fsck
is actually running this could further damage you fs, but since you
can't do anything else I would say to give it a try.

To summarize:

1. See if you have disk activity when fsck seems to be stuck.

2. Try fsck (-p) first on root, the on tmp, /var, /usr, /home.

3. Esp. if fsck / doesn't go ok try booting verbose with Fixit CD and
run fsck from there.

4. If 1 gets you the same results try putting the disk in another
machine where you have debugging options in the kernel, break to
debugger and gather info from there (esp. if you're running 5.x try
asking on current@ what exactly to look for in the debugger).



-- 
IOnut
Unregistered ;) FreeBSD user
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Re: Booting Problem After Power Loss (fsck)?

2004-02-09 Thread Ion-Mihai Tetcu
On Mon, 9 Feb 2004 11:44:46 +0200
Ion-Mihai Tetcu [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

 On Sun, 08 Feb 2004 21:12:51 -0800
 Rishi Chopra [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 
  Here's a summary of my problem so far:

[..]
 
 To summarize:
 
 1. See if you have disk activity when fsck seems to be stuck.
 
 2. Try fsck (-p) first on root, the on tmp, /var, /usr, /home.
 
 3. Esp. if fsck / doesn't go ok try booting verbose with Fixit CD and
 run fsck from there.
 
 4. If 1 gets you the same results try putting the disk in another
  
If 3 gets ...

 machine where you have debugging options in the kernel, break to
 debugger and gather info from there (esp. if you're running 5.x try
 asking on current@ what exactly to look for in the debugger).


-- 
IOnut
Unregistered ;) FreeBSD user
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Re: Booting Problem After Power Loss (fsck)?

2004-02-09 Thread Rishi Chopra
Please see my reply below:

Ion-Mihai Tetcu wrote:
On Sun, 08 Feb 2004 21:12:51 -0800
Rishi Chopra [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

Here's a summary of my problem so far:

Server was idle (e.g. absolutely no processes running aside from
csh, ttyv0 and ps) when power was cut; server reports a problem mounting 
/usr partition upon reboot.

I have since tried the following:

(1) Booted into single-user mode and ran 'fsck' - the latest output to 
the terminal says:

 FILE SYSTEM MARKED CLEAN 
/dev/da0s1e
Last Mounted on /usr
Phase 1 - check blocks and sizes
After letting the system 'do its thing' for 5+ days, the output did not 
change.

(2) I tried an 'fsck -p' and got the following message:

/dev/da0s1a: 1128 files, 36058 used, 47059 free (261 frags, 58771 
blocks, 0.1% fragmentations)


Do you get the prompt back ? Try fsck -p on / then on /var /tmp and last
/usr. At least you will know what partitions are ok. Better yet I
suggest you boot from the second aka Fixit CD and run fsck from there;
you fsck binary may be broken. Also boot verbose (I don't know if
safe-mode applies to SCSI, but if it does, try that also).
This is exactly the problem.  The 'fsck' command does not return to a 
prompt.

The display has been stuck with that same output for countless hours now.


Do you have disk activity when fsck seems to be stuck ?


Questions I have:

(1) Have I suffered a total loss or is this still some way to revover my 
filesystem?  After suffering a similar loss with a hardware raid-0 
failure under win2k, I was assuming the FreeBSD setup would be more 
durable.  I would hate to walk away thinking that a simple power loss 
could wipe out a freebsd server under nothing more than one terminal login.


Generally this doesn't happen. From my experience, it happens if either
there are problems with the disk access infrastructure (a la timeouts,
etc. on ata) or something bad elsewhere in the kernel.

(2) Why would a simple fsck of the filesystem not work in my case?


If you have the kernel with 
options DDB
options BREAK_TO_DEBUGGER

and no disk activity I suggest that you break to debugger hitting
Ctrl+Esc and try to gather some info from there. Note that in case fsck
is actually running this could further damage you fs, but since you
can't do anything else I would say to give it a try.
To summarize:

1. See if you have disk activity when fsck seems to be stuck.

2. Try fsck (-p) first on root, the on tmp, /var, /usr, /home.

3. Esp. if fsck / doesn't go ok try booting verbose with Fixit CD and
run fsck from there.
4. If 1 gets you the same results try putting the disk in another
machine where you have debugging options in the kernel, break to
debugger and gather info from there (esp. if you're running 5.x try
asking on current@ what exactly to look for in the debugger).


--
Rishi Chopra
http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~rchopra
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Re: Booting Problem After Power Loss (fsck)?

2004-02-09 Thread Rishi Chopra
I do not have the FIX-IT CD or another FreeBSD machine.

Is there another fellow FreeBSD'er in the Bay Area, CA that can 
volunteer to help me troubleshoot the card as described below (e.g. plug 
in the card and break to debugger to gather info)?  I can drive over to 
your place or you can come over to my house (directions on my homepage).

If it helps, my perspective is that meeting up is totally positve and 
the only thing left keeping me involved with computing - allow me to 
explain:

The server was totally idle when the power was cut, and I didn't make 
any changes while the server was down.  I've seen some crazy things 
working on computers before (I can show you a list, post one to the 
newsgroup, or if you're curious you can try searching the google groups 
link on my homepage.)  This would by far have to the most stubborn, 
underhanded, mean, nasty and implausable error I've ever come accross.

I could really use some help getting the filesytem up again; my heart 
can't take another failure like this, and I'm ready to give up computers 
(recreationally and professionally) if I can't get this problem fixed. 
I had just finished recovering from a 2 year reconsolidation of life and 
data (a 75GXP/Raid-0 failure and data loss occurred while I was studying 
at UC Berkeley and triggered a very nasty chain of events culminating in 
this problem.)  I can't handle going through another data consolidation; 
recovering from a recent thyroid removal and a 12-hour neck 
dissection/removal is a full-time affair, and the 30 some-odd staples in 
my neck greatly limit my ability to sit at the computer.

Looks like the important thing is for me to make a new friend in the 
FreeBSD community and a new start on computing, or bid y'all adieu.

--
Rishi Chopra
http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~rchopra
Ion-Mihai Tetcu wrote:
On Sun, 08 Feb 2004 21:12:51 -0800
Rishi Chopra [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

Here's a summary of my problem so far:

Server was idle (e.g. absolutely no processes running aside from
csh, ttyv0 and ps) when power was cut; server reports a problem mounting 
/usr partition upon reboot.

I have since tried the following:

(1) Booted into single-user mode and ran 'fsck' - the latest output to 
the terminal says:

 FILE SYSTEM MARKED CLEAN 
/dev/da0s1e
Last Mounted on /usr
Phase 1 - check blocks and sizes
After letting the system 'do its thing' for 5+ days, the output did not 
change.

(2) I tried an 'fsck -p' and got the following message:

/dev/da0s1a: 1128 files, 36058 used, 47059 free (261 frags, 58771 
blocks, 0.1% fragmentations)


Do you get the prompt back ? Try fsck -p on / then on /var /tmp and last
/usr. At least you will know what partitions are ok. Better yet I
suggest you boot from the second aka Fixit CD and run fsck from there;
you fsck binary may be broken. Also boot verbose (I don't know if
safe-mode applies to SCSI, but if it does, try that also).

The display has been stuck with that same output for countless hours now.


Do you have disk activity when fsck seems to be stuck ?


Questions I have:

(1) Have I suffered a total loss or is this still some way to revover my 
filesystem?  After suffering a similar loss with a hardware raid-0 
failure under win2k, I was assuming the FreeBSD setup would be more 
durable.  I would hate to walk away thinking that a simple power loss 
could wipe out a freebsd server under nothing more than one terminal login.


Generally this doesn't happen. From my experience, it happens if either
there are problems with the disk access infrastructure (a la timeouts,
etc. on ata) or something bad elsewhere in the kernel.

(2) Why would a simple fsck of the filesystem not work in my case?


If you have the kernel with 
options DDB
options BREAK_TO_DEBUGGER

and no disk activity I suggest that you break to debugger hitting
Ctrl+Esc and try to gather some info from there. Note that in case fsck
is actually running this could further damage you fs, but since you
can't do anything else I would say to give it a try.
To summarize:

1. See if you have disk activity when fsck seems to be stuck.

2. Try fsck (-p) first on root, the on tmp, /var, /usr, /home.

3. Esp. if fsck / doesn't go ok try booting verbose with Fixit CD and
run fsck from there.
4. If 1 gets you the same results try putting the disk in another
machine where you have debugging options in the kernel, break to
debugger and gather info from there (esp. if you're running 5.x try
asking on current@ what exactly to look for in the debugger).


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Booting Problem After Power Loss (fsck)?

2004-02-08 Thread Rishi Chopra
Here's a summary of my problem so far:

Server was idle (e.g. absolutely no processes running aside from
csh, ttyv0 and ps) when power was cut; server reports a problem mounting 
/usr partition upon reboot.

I have since tried the following:

(1) Booted into single-user mode and ran 'fsck' - the latest output to 
the terminal says:

 FILE SYSTEM MARKED CLEAN 
/dev/da0s1e
Last Mounted on /usr
Phase 1 - check blocks and sizes
After letting the system 'do its thing' for 5+ days, the output did not 
change.

(2) I tried an 'fsck -p' and got the following message:

/dev/da0s1a: 1128 files, 36058 used, 47059 free (261 frags, 58771 
blocks, 0.1% fragmentations)

The display has been stuck with that same output for countless hours now.

Questions I have:

(1) Have I suffered a total loss or is this still some way to revover my 
filesystem?  After suffering a similar loss with a hardware raid-0 
failure under win2k, I was assuming the FreeBSD setup would be more 
durable.  I would hate to walk away thinking that a simple power loss 
could wipe out a freebsd server under nothing more than one terminal login.

(2) Why would a simple fsck of the filesystem not work in my case?

Thanks,
Rishi
Ion-Mihai Tetcu wrote:

On Tue, 03 Feb 2004 01:09:22 -0800
Rishi Chopra [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

I booted into single-user mode and ran 'fsck' - the latest output to the 
terminal says:

FILE SYSTEM MARKED CLEAN
/dev/da0s1e
Last Mounted on /usr
Phase 1 - check blocks and sizes
	FILE SYSTEM STILL DIRTY		


Can't be only this. It should have outputted something else between
Phase 1 and FILE SYSTEM STILL DIRTY.

Will fsck continue attempting to fix the filesystem?  Have I suffered a 
total loss or is fsck still doing its thing?


Read man fsck and its see also section.



--
Rishi Chopra
http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~rchopra
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