First is getting it to boot.
Go to /etc/fstab, and remove the entry for the /home partition. This will
allow you to boot, and /home will simply be an empty directory.
I'm assuming you have read/write access to /etc. If not, then ask.
Once your system is up again, and things are working except for an empty
/home directory/partition, we're ready to fix the /home (well, we can't fix
it, but we can start fresh again...)
Shut it back down, and add your HDD. I'll assume it's the only hard drive
on your second IDE cable.
hda is the master drive on the first ide cable
hdb is the slave on the first ide cable.
hdc is the master on the second ide cable.
hdd is the slave on the second ide cable.
so I'll be referring to hdc, that may be different for your situation.
Ok, so restart the machine with your new HDD in place. If you have a flavor
of Linux that autodetects your hardware (Red Hat uses Kudzu, for example)
than let it do it's configuration thing. To my knowledge it doesn't really
do anything here anyway. If your flavor doesn't autodetect, than just go to
the command line.
Now, create the partition.
fdisk /dev/hdc
p -print the current partition table. If neccessary, delete current
partitions (d), make SURE you're working on the correct drive.
n - create a new partition.
p - primary partition
1 - make it the first partition. I expect it'll be your only
partition...
accept the default start of 1
accept the default end of whatever it is...
w -write the partition table changes, and exit fdisk. If yuo've made
a mistake, hit q for quit (abort).
now, format the partition...
mke2fs -j /dev/hdc1
this means "make ext2 file system -j means with journaling (which you
may not support if it's an old system, but I'd be suprised. You want this)
/dev/hdc1 means /Device/HardDriveCpartition1
This will take a few seconds to run, but not overly long... Others may
disagree here, but if it's a really big hard drive, I'd change it to
mke2fs -j -m 1 /dev/hdc1
which is the same thing, except the m 1 means reserve 1% of the drive for
superuser use only. By default, 5% will be reserved, and 5% is one heck of
alot of space on a bigger drive.
anyways, once that completes, you're ready to mount it.
mount -t ext3 /dev/hdc1 /home
The ext3 may seem a bit confusing here. Ext3 is simply an ext2 partition
with journaling, which we chose. So even though we said mke2fs, the -j
option means make an ext3 partition...
Ok, now, go back to /etc/fstab and add the line for home.
/dev/hdc1 /home ext3 defaults 1 1
This is from memory, so it might be wrong (sorry), it'll be obvious from the
other lines what should be where.
If the fstab file doesn't make any sense to you, let me know, post your
current fstab, and I'll redo the line a bit better for ya.
You can leave the fstab alone if you'd like, and just manually mount /home
after you reboot the machine if the line I gave doesn't look like it'll fit
with your setup.
Enjoy.
Kev.
----- Original Message -----
From: "rwtoole" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Tuesday, March 11, 2003 9:14 PM
Subject: (clug-talk) Dead Hard drive - Need Help!
> All,
>
> Just had one of the hard drives in my Redhat 8.0 box die. No question,
> its dead Jim. :( (Stupid Fujitsu junk, I'm glad they quit making desktop
> HDs)
>
> Trouble is, this is the drive where /home was mounted, and it drops me
> to a shell right after the file system check.
>
> This is the first time I have had to recover from a dead HD under Linux,
> and so... Help!
>
> My question is, how do I make a new /home folder from this shell it puts
> me into, and scrub the Fush*tsu from fstab? So it will boot?
>
> Thanks in advance,
>
> Rob.
>
>
>
