[Techtalk] Partitioning issues.

[Staci]

On Sun, 27 Jul 2003, Jacinta Richardson wrote:
> > That's what i've been thinking.  unfortunately, it doesn't work quite
> > that easily.  Once you've altered the table, it wants a new fs, and it
> > won't take no for an answer. :/
>
> Once again this advice is assuming you previously had a linux partition.
> I don't know enough to help you if you had had a windows partition and you
> broke it up into anything.  The advice may still be valid, but I don't
> know.
> Now you say:  "Once you've altered the table, it wants a new fs, and it
> won't take no for an answer. :/"  BUT you must have been able to give ti
> the answer No already, otherwise you'd have put over your new fs.  So...

No, I didn't give it any answer.  I guess what I meant was, it refuses to even mount it without me making a NEW
fs, it won't even look at the old one, keeps saying there isn't one, bad superblock or whatever.

> a) run fdisk and turn the partition table back EXACTLY to what it was like
> before you reparitioned it.

Already done to the best of my ability.  If it put it to different starting/ending points, there's nothing I can
do, all the other partitions on the drive are the same as they were, this partition is all remaining space, so
there shouldn't be ROOM for it to put it somewhere different.

> b) stop it at the point where it attempts to create a new fs as you've
> done before.  Labelling the partition as a particular fs isn't creating a
> new fs.

No, no new fs.  If I had a new fs, I wouldn't have any data to rescue.
That last sentence is exactly the problem. No, labelling the partition does not create a new fs.  However, once
you relabel it, the system won't look at the old fs anymore, just keeps saying there isn't one, or none of them
apply, or whatever.

This is THE MOST frustrating part of this.  The data is there, I never remade the fs, or did anything to
overwrite the data.  All I did was change the labels.
Imagine if you put a CD in the wrong case, and then suddenly the CD just disappeared, just cuz it had the wrong
label. :(

> c) check that your kernal can see this partition (reboot if necessary)

How do I know if the kernel can see it?  If it appears in fdisk, is that enuf?

> d) check that this partition does NOT appear to be in /etc/fstab

Done.

> e) boot into Linux, manually mount the disk as readonly, see what data you
> can find.

No mounting.  It says:

bash-2.05a# mount -o ro -t vfat /dev/hda4 /mnt/hd
mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/hda4,
       or too many mounted file systems

(incidentally it says the same thing with or without the "-o ro")

> Please let me know if you have any specific problems with any of these.
> If this continues to be a problem, perhaps someone in the Linuxchix group
> in your area (if you're lucky enough to have one) can get together with
> you and you can both go through it together?

No linuxchix group here.
We have a local LUG, but mostly the answer has been "it's GONE, just get over it!"
I have one guy who said he'd bring a USB HD and help me back it all up to his HD and then mess with it to see
what we can do.  Sometime. :/


sl