From: kfogel@occs.cs.oberlin.edu (Karl Fogel)
Subject: HELP!!! Partition table failure, 200 MB of data at stake...
Organization: Oberlin College Computer Science
Date: Thu, 7 Jan 1993 16:26:44 GMT
Distribution: comp.os.linux
X-Posted-From: occs.cs.oberlin.edu
NNTP-Posting-Host: sol.ctr.columbia.edu




	Following this is a fairly detailed description of the
problem. There are about 200 MB of data at stake here, including some
documentation-in-progress for the Linux Documentation Project (my hard
drive was to big to back up fully, since I don't have a tape drive.
The funny thing is that last night, before this happened, I was
formatting all of my disks so I could back up the most important
stuff. I had formatted most of them and decided to finish the rest
today, and so I turned off the computer -- and that was the last time
I was able to get Linux up and running) Anyone who can help solve this
will be remembered in my will, even if it's just a "Hello" :-) Details
follow: 


	I boot from my hard drive using Lilo 5 with the 0.99 kernel
(this had been working fine for some time, and I hadn't gotten around
to upgrading Lilo yet). Linux is the only OS on my machine, and
/dev/hda2 is root. This time, when I turned on the computer, the hard
disk light blinked on and off for a long time, and finally I got the
message:

	C: drive failure
	
	RUN SETUP UTILITY

	Press <F1> to RESUME


	Well, I keep a few boot disks around just in case. I inserted
one that boots but uses /dev/hda2 as root, thinking that I could still
fix it once I was in Linux. No go, it can't get access to anything on
the hard drive. So I tried using the good old BOOT-US and UTIL-US from
MCC, because they do not even make use of the hard drive at all. Here
is what happened: I insert the BOOT-US disk and turn on the computer.
It checks all drives (as always), even though it has looked at A:
first and (?)  knows that there is a bootable disk in there. But when
it checks the C: drive, I get the following error message:


	C: drive failure
	
	RUN SETUP UTILITY

	Press <F1> to RESUME


	I press F1, and then these error messages come:


HD: read_intr: status = 0x11
HD: read_intr: error = 0x4

HD: win_result: status = 0x11  	       	       	 -
HD: win_result: error = 0x4                    	  |   
HD: win_result: status = 0x11		       	  |    
HD: win_result: error = 0x4		       	  |   
HD: win_result: status = 0x11		       	  |   this stuff gets
HD: win_result: error = 0x4		       	  |   repeated
HD: win_result: status = 0x11		       	  |   several times
HD: win_result: error = 0x4		       	  |		   
HD-controller reset			       	  |		   
HD controller times out, status = 0x10	       	  |		   
HD-controller still busy		       	 _ 		   
								   
Unable to read partition table of device 0300

Partition table OK...

 


	...and it goes on to boot from floppy just fine from there.
But when I try to mount /dev/hda2 on /foo (created for that purpose),
I get this:


bread failed
/dev/hda2 already mounted or /foo busy


	...neither of which is true, of course. So then I tried to run
fdisk, and got these error messages:



HD: win_result: status = 0x11  	       	       	 -
HD: win_result: error = 0x4                    	  |   
HD: win_result: status = 0x11		       	  |    
HD: win_result: error = 0x4		       	  |   
HD: win_result: status = 0x11		       	  |   this stuff gets
HD: win_result: error = 0x4		       	  |   repeated
HD: win_result: status = 0x11		       	  |   several times
HD: win_result: error = 0x4		       	  |		   
HD-controller reset			       	  |		   
HD controller times out, status = 0x10	       	  |		   
HD-controller still busy		       	 _ 		   


hardisk I/O error
dev 0300, sector 4
Unable to read /dev/hda


...and that's it. No go. I think all this is a partition table
problem, not a filesystem problem, because when I try to mount
/dev/hda4 (which is an archive partition I keep around and which I
have not mounted in weeks, so I couldn't have cause any problems on
it's filesystem or anything), I get the same "bread failed" message as
with hda2, except that it says "/dev/hda4" now, of course!
	If it could be at all significant, I just added another 4 megs
of RAM, bringing me to a total of 8, a couple of days ago. But this
would have been the third or fourth time booting up with the new RAM
in, and I hadn't had any trouble with it at all. I have not run fdisk
or anything else that might screw up the partition table in months,
unless Lilo could be doing it when it boots up. Last night I was
running X just fine, and lots of other things... now Linux is dead and
I am heartbroken :(  Please, if anyone has any idea how to fix this,
tell me. I do have access to another Linuxer here, if the solution
requires using Linux/GCC or anything. Thanks!


--

 Karl Fogel ("Leg of Lark") <>    Member, League for Programming Freedom
   kfogel@cs.oberlin.edu    <>    (Mail lpf@uunet.uu.net for more info.)
 fogel@antares.mcs.anl.gov  <>  Any opinions disclaimed are entirely my own.
 <> Linux, the free, copylefted Unix for the 386/486 PC <> Ask me more!! <>