[ILUG] Just how badly messed is my /?

[Marek]

On Thursday 21 September 2006 13:38, Niall O Broin wrote:
> On 21 Sep 2006, at 14:30, Marek McGann wrote:
> > paul at clubi.ie wrote:
> >> On Thu, 21 Sep 2006, Marek McGann wrote:
> >>> So, my question is, just how royally screwed am I? Is there any
> >>> hope of my getting any information back at the end of all this?
> >>
> >> Yes, look in lost+found/ once fsck is finished. inodes that fsck
> >> disconnects from the namespace are linked into that directory.
> >
> > Thanks. fsck has just finished. Things restart rather promisingly
> > (Kubuntu splashscreen as normal as far as mounting root), then it
> > spits out the following and drops me to a prompt:
> >
> > mount: Mounting /dev/hda1 on /root failed: Invalid argument
> > mount: Mounting /root/dev on /dev/.static/dev failed: No such file
> > or directory
> > mount: Mounting /sys on /root/sys failed: No such file or directory
> > mount: Mounting /proc on /root/proc failed: No such file or directory
> > Target filesystem doesn't have /sbin/init
> >
> > The shell it drops me to is BusyBox v1.01 (Debian 1:1.01-4ubuntu3)
> > Built-in shell (ash), which seems like something of a recovery
> > tool. There's no /home (which was a separate partition mounted as /
> > home before things got borked).
> >
> > Will it take much to get things working (or close to) again? Or
> > should I opt for the nuclear option of formatting and reinstalling
> > (an MS approach, I appreciate, but I really don't know much about
> > what I'm doing, and with /home on a separate partition, I'm hoping
> > it didn't get trashed in the same way / seems to have).
>
> Realistically, reinstalling will be faster, presuming that you didn't
> have a lot of customisation of your install done. Happily, your /home
> was on a different partition. You could even check that by booting
> frlom the kubuntu CD, and then firing up a shell and mounting the
> partition with /home (indeed, kubuntu may even do that for you
> automatically - I don't recall, and I'm not in a position to check)

So I've fired up the Kubuntu CD and check the available disks (using Kubuntu's 
System Settings > Disks & Filesystems):

/dev/hda1 35.7 Gb
/dev/hda2 1 Kb
/dev/hda5 swap

I honestly can't remember which was / and which /home, but given that it's a 
40Gb drive and /dev/hda2 should on no account be 2Kb, is it safe to conclude 
that my drive has basically been wasted? (Likely leaving me with the 
equivalent of a mild stroke in terms of productivity for the next few weeks)

M