[gentoo-user] Note: USE=ffmpeg alsa-plugins-1.1.6 won't build with recent ffmpeg
Apparently, this is due to removal of deprecated audio resampling functions but I didn't check thoroughly. https://www.ffmpeg.org/doxygen/2.4/group__lavc__resample.html Whatever the issue is, it is not reflected in ebuild yet. Just FYI. signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-user] data recovery advice needed
On 2018.12.17 17:32, Heiko Baums wrote: Am Sat, 15 Dec 2018 18:33:35 -0500 schrieb Jack : Some months ago, I borked a laptop HDD by trying to move a partition in a way that left both the old and new partitions invalid. (For my sanity, I've forced the details out of my memory, but the old and new locations overlapped, and I think the move might have been interrupted. My own fault, I know.) Have you written anything on this HDD after moving those partitions? And did you move the partitions or did you repartition the HDD? At this point, unfortunately, my memory is hazy. I did not repartition, but the damage made accessing anything difficult (see details below). The additional problem is that now I'm getting physical read errors on the drive, so to be safe, I'd need to get another drive large enough to use ddrescue, and then go digging. You could try to find the beginning of the old partitions with hexedit and set a pointer to this position with losetup. Set the offset to this position. Linux actually doesn't need partitions to access the HDD and/or mount file systems. Partitions just make it a lot easier. At this point, I think I've forgotten the details, but using the example of a 300G drive with 100G empty and then a 200G partition, when I moved the partition to the beginning of the disk (using gparted, as I remember) once it moved more than the first 100G of the partition, it overwrote the beginning of the original partition, and once it overwrote any of the directory structure it still needed to know where stuff was, game over. The first 100G of the "new" partition is essentially intact, but the damage to the beginning of the "old" partition makes it difficult to start. I suppose I could go looking for any intact directory inodes and see whether it's intact enough to find anything of interest. (There are really only a few files I would still like to recover - but as they are in fact .VDI files, it's likely all or nothing, because I don't think just part of one of them will be at all useful.) In fact, it would be more acurate to say there was another 100G before all of that, and that partition is still intact, except for the read errors. And keep in mind that partitions are written to the partition table at the beginning of the drive. Repartitioning usually doesn't overwrite any data. So if you haven't written anything onto the new partitions (incl. formatting the new partitions) all the data is most likely still there. The "new" partition is incomplete, but essentially intact, as much of it is there. The beginning of the "old" partition is overwitten with stuff from somewhere in the middle of the partition being moved. So you could also try to recover your old partition table. Maybe the backup of your old super block is still intact. Unfortunately I can't remember how to find it out. Maybe with fdisk resp. gdisk or with testdisk. I know the location of all the partition starts and ends, so that's not the issue. I just need lots more empty space to put the copies so I can safely go digging. But there is a chance that the behavior of moving partitions is a bit different than repartitioning the HDD, so that the data is actually already overwritten by moving those partitions. Exactly. On the other hand, if you had really moved the partitions the partitioning tool you used should have seen that both partitions would overlap and shouldn't have done this. I think I mentioned that. I'm going to have to do some testing, and probably learn that gparted is smarter than I thought, which means I've clearly forgotten something else stupid that I did. Otherwise, I'll file a bug against gparted. That said, no matter which problem you have with an HDD, always stay calm and think first before you do anything. In most cases you can recover your data. But the first step is to stop working (particularly writing) with this HDD. The second step is - as the others already mentioned - to make a copy with dd or ddrescue. All that would be good and "easy" (for some definition) if the disk itself were not in process of failing. I had a lot of HDD crashes, logical and physical ones. And once I even didn't have a backup. I never lost any data so far, not even a bit. I'd call that "famous last words" :-) Heiko Jack
Re: [gentoo-user] data recovery advice needed
Am Sat, 15 Dec 2018 18:33:35 -0500 schrieb Jack : > Some months ago, I borked a laptop HDD by trying to move a partition > in a way that left both the old and new partitions invalid. (For my > sanity, I've forced the details out of my memory, but the old and > new locations overlapped, and I think the move might have been > interrupted. My own fault, I know.) Have you written anything on this HDD after moving those partitions? And did you move the partitions or did you repartition the HDD? You could try to find the beginning of the old partitions with hexedit and set a pointer to this position with losetup. Set the offset to this position. Linux actually doesn't need partitions to access the HDD and/or mount file systems. Partitions just make it a lot easier. And keep in mind that partitions are written to the partition table at the beginning of the drive. Repartitioning usually doesn't overwrite any data. So if you haven't written anything onto the new partitions (incl. formatting the new partitions) all the data is most likely still there. So you could also try to recover your old partition table. Maybe the backup of your old super block is still intact. Unfortunately I can't remember how to find it out. Maybe with fdisk resp. gdisk or with testdisk. But there is a chance that the behavior of moving partitions is a bit different than repartitioning the HDD, so that the data is actually already overwritten by moving those partitions. On the other hand, if you had really moved the partitions the partitioning tool you used should have seen that both partitions would overlap and shouldn't have done this. That said, no matter which problem you have with an HDD, always stay calm and think first before you do anything. In most cases you can recover your data. But the first step is to stop working (particularly writing) with this HDD. The second step is - as the others already mentioned - to make a copy with dd or ddrescue. I had a lot of HDD crashes, logical and physical ones. And once I even didn't have a backup. I never lost any data so far, not even a bit. Heiko
Re: [gentoo-user] data recovery advice needed
On 12/17/2018 12:42 PM, Rich Freeman wrote: There is of course no guarantee that it will EVER successfully read all your data. You might be able to tell it to skip blocks and move on. Obviously all it can do is keep asking the drive to try again. If you want better than that then you're talking clean room rescue measures. As long as the drive isn't going into physical failure; bearings, thermal death, etc, you may be okay. I'm a fan of SpinRite. I've had SpinRite recover things that everything else said was impossible to recover. SpinRite addresses media issues and helps the drive detect that there is a problem. SpinRite also has a mode, DynaStat, that it will try many many many times to read a given sector using all sorts of tricks, head seek patterns, etc. (You can also alter it's default behavior to try more or fewer times.) There is no trial copy of SpinRite. But GRC does have a good return policy. If you buy SpinRite to recover your drive, and are unsatisfied, they will very very extremely likely give you your money back. (There is a tiny fraction of a chance that they won't refund your money if you don't try the things they ask to make sure that you aren't using SpinRite properly.) So, it's not like you are out money if it doesn't work. (I think it's MSRP of ~$90.) Aside: It sounds like your drive might think that it has problems reading the media, which is SpinRite's domain. Make sure the drive is not overheating. Even a lowly 80 mm case fan will move more than enough air to keep the average drive cool enough, even during heavy use / data recovery. Once you know that you have good magnetic media, then you can start playing to reconstruct your partition. So, SpinRite is an option before places like DriveSavers (or what ever name they go by). Even they have a no-guarantee of recovery policy. If you're trying to rescue your bittorrent collection I'd suggest moving on. I misread "bittorrent" as "bitcoin". That /might/ be another story. Depending on how many BTC you have. -- Grant. . . . unix || die
Re: [gentoo-user] data recovery advice needed
On 12/17/2018 12:32 PM, Jack wrote: The other drive failed over a shorter period of time, even though SMART testing said all was OK. IMHO, by the time that S.M.A.R.T. complains, most chances of data retrieval are gone. I treat S.M.A.R.T. errors as a confirmation that the drive realizes that there is an imminent or past tense catastrophic failure. -- Grant. . . . unix || die
Re: [gentoo-user] data recovery advice needed
On Mon, Dec 17, 2018 at 2:32 PM Jack wrote: > > ddrescue has now been running for almost 22 hours, and it's been 47 > seconds less than that since its last successful read. There is of course no guarantee that it will EVER successfully read all your data. You might be able to tell it to skip blocks and move on. Obviously all it can do is keep asking the drive to try again. If you want better than that then you're talking clean room rescue measures. > I did one run of testdisk on one partition on the drive months ago. > One problem is that the extension on the recovered files is not > necessarily the original extension (even if the file is actually > recoverable) and there seem to be some file types is doesn't (or didn't > then) know about. I may well try it again after much more reading on > tuning its behavior. Even in the best of circumstances this sort of approach is painstaking. If that drive has the only photos of your kid's birth it might be worth the trouble to you. If you're trying to rescue your bittorrent collection I'd suggest moving on. Or you can try to pay somebody to do it for you. There is a reason those recovery companies charge an arm and a leg. People who are desperate enough to need their services don't have many other options... -- Rich
Re: [gentoo-user] data recovery advice needed
Thanks to both Rich and Grant for suggestions. Part of my issue is that I currently have two different failing/failed HDDs to deal with, and one of them has two different problems. At this point, although there are files I would really love to recover from each of them, it's not critical, so I'm taking my time. I'll post more details or at least status upste later, depending on how things work out. On 2018.12.15 19:19, Rich Freeman wrote: On Sat, Dec 15, 2018 at 6:33 PM Jack wrote: > So, I removed that HDD for safekeeping (completely reinstalled the laptop on a new drive) and now I'm trying to recover data from an intact partition on the old drive, the problem being that the drive is giving some read errors, so I want to minimize access, lest it die completely. Ok, step 1 - make a copy of the drive before you go messing with it. I suggest using ddrescue for this. Basically it works like dd (creates an image of the drive), but it is persistent in the face of read errors. ddrescue has now been running for almost 22 hours, and it's been 47 seconds less than that since its last successful read. The odd thing (to me, although it probably should not be) is that the first issue with this drive was my own stupidity for trying to move a partition in a way I should have known would not work. (Simplified if inaccurate description is a 300GB drive with 100GB free and then a 200GB partition, which I tried to move to the beginning of the drive.) That garbled the partition, but the drive itself still worked fine. Since then, the drive itself has started giving lots of read errors, thus the slow progress of ddrescue.) The other drive failed over a shorter period of time, even though SMART testing said all was OK. One of the failures led to fsck "fixing"lots of stuff, but truncating or otherwise effectively destroying lots of files. It's a SATA drive, now connected to a laptop (only place I have enough recovery space on a good drive) by a SAS to USB adaptor. Once you have a copy of the drive you can now start experimenting. Obviously keep that copy safe and if you want to write to it create another copy. understood and agreed. As far as fixing dates goes - the touch suggestion might work but honestly unless you're in a super hurry I'd just do another copy. once the ddrescue works, any approach will work. However, neither is likely to be very helpful with the number of read failures I'm getting. If you've lost any kind of drive metadata such that files are missing completely there are utilities that can scan disk blocks looking for things like text files, or jpegs. That is going to be a massive headache but if you've lost something indispensible it is an option. I did one run of testdisk on one partition on the drive months ago. One problem is that the extension on the recovered files is not necessarily the original extension (even if the file is actually recoverable) and there seem to be some file types is doesn't (or didn't then) know about. I may well try it again after much more reading on tuning its behavior. Ultimately your goal is going to be to get the files you care about off the drive. Then you can just copy/rsync them to a completely fresh filesystem - I wouldn't go trying to copy the old filesystem using dd if it has been subject to read errors or especially partial overwrites of metadata. You want the metadata to be clean. right. And then once you have your data back on a disk give some thought to your backup strategy. If you care about data enough to be going through trouble to rescue it, you should probably have a backup of it. When I was messing around with btrfs and the filesystem ate my data I wasn't messing around with hex editors - I just wiped the filesystem and rsynced from a backup. Sure, it takes time, but you know the filesystem is completely clean when you're done. Someone (on this list?) had a signature "There are two kinds of people: those who do backups and those who have never had a hard drive fail." I guess there's actually a third. -- Rich Jack
Re: [gentoo-user] Linux 4.19.8 kernel panics with netfilter/iptables
* Hasan Ç.: > I can share my results. Have you been able to run some tests yet? -Ralph
