A slight problem....

[aged hippy]

I have a slight problem...

I have two hard drives, hda (~150Gb) which is divided thus:
hda1: NTFS (C: partition)
hda2: /
hda3: /home
hda4: storage

and hdb (~40Gb) thus:
hdb1: NTFS (to back up the XP install)
hdb2: ext3 (to back up the /home partition

I needed another partition on hda, so deleted the storage partition with the intention of making an extended partition containing two other partitions, but unfortunately when i try to boot Kubuntu, i get:

....
dev/hda2: clean
dev/hda3: recovering journal : clean : 101812/5013504 files, 3007125/100101503 blocks
fsck.ext3: unable to resolve "UUID=cca2dd90-3693-48a1-895c-aca42921753a"
fsck died with exit status 8
fail!

It saves a log in var/log/fsck/checkfs which the 7.10 install disk refuses to let me access.

I would like to be able to somehow copy the contents of /home over to hdb2 before i do anything drastic... there are several Gb there i would hate to lose.


Any help or guidance whatsoever will be greatly appreciated, and rest assured; this is the last time i will mend something which works perfectly well

Incidentally.... hello from the XP installation.

[Qqmike]

Re: A slight problem....

I think this is normal behavior (on the part of the PC, that is).

Re-start it again, when it comes to that point, press Enter then Control-D to see if you can get past this freeze. The message you get “unable to resolve UUID etc...” is normal – that UUID is gone since you deleted that partition. I get these errors all the time in my re-partitioning/GRUB experiments.

Later, after you settle on your final new partition(s), you can get in there (to your working Kubuntu) and edit fstab (use Konsole: blkid to get new UUIDs etc.).

Worst case, you could use a live Kubuntu CD to mount your partitions and copy off your data (to flash drive or somewhere). But try the Control-D thing first.

[Qqmike]

Re: A slight problem....

Gotta leave for awhile and not sure where you're at with the fix, so I'll drop a little more info in case it would be useful to you:


You can keep using Control-D to get booted into your Kubuntu.
Or, fix it by editing /etc/fstab in your Kubuntu to reflect the new UUID for that partition.

(In Kubuntu, Open Konqueror, type /etc in the Location window, then right-click on fstab, Actions > Edit as Root, do the edit (change out the bad UUID), then File > Save and File > Quit.
To get the right UUIDs, Open Konsole, type blkid, and up they'll come, then copy/paste into fstab.)

(Looks like "UUID=cca2dd90-3693-48a1-895c-aca42921753a" is the UUID of the old deleted partition. Of course, instead of it, you'll have partition 4 = Extended, and partition 5 = the new data partition, so you'll have to sort out how fstab is seeing all this, but it's done the way I've indicated here, and Control-D is your friend.)

[aged hippy]

Re: A slight problem....

Thank you for the help, Qqmike,

I've tried the CtrlD thing, and it tries to load things then gives up.
After that there's just a flashing cursor, and CtrlD has no further effect.

What i'll do is download the live CD tonight (it's free after midnight ), and copy the old /home to hdb2 sometime tomorrow.

I'm considering a(nother) fresh install of 7.14 altogether.... i'm fairly proficient at it now and think that this may well be better than trying to fix a broken one.

[Qqmike]

Re: A slight problem....

OK. I probably agree. There are, no doubt, ways to work past the flashing cursor (an X thing, Alt-F2, startx, who knows!), but if you don't mind a new install, that always seems to put things clean and right. I do installs all the time, and I agree with you, it is not a big deal. It *does* sound like something else got messed up here besides a simple UUID change, but, again, who knows for sure!