Mageia forum

by **mark9117** » Dec 29th, '11, 04:45

This is actually a duplicate of the post at https://forums.mageia.org/en/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1605, but that post is getting a little stale and I have more info.

My HTPC locked up and just failed to reboot last week. Attempted reboot saw the POST move really slowly taking almost 5 minutes to discover all attached devices. Attempting to boot from the hard drive results in gfxmenu not found (hd1,7) and then "grub error 22" no such partition.

The three HD's attached are S.M.A.R.T capable and enabled; all three show OK health. Seagate's diag run on the boot disc (a 320 GB Barracuda) shows the disc failing with age, but not imminently so.

When I boot into a GUI (Mageia live CD) I can use the partition manager to see /dev/sdb8 (/boot) full of the files and directories that you would see in the /boot directory. They're all there. But when I boot the Magia DVD into rescue mode and mount all the existing partitions under /mnt, I can see the /mnt/boot partition in the terminal, but it is empty.

The fdisk -l command yields:

Code: Select all: fdisk -l Disk /dev/sda: 250.1 GB, 250059350016 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 30401 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes Disk identifier: 0x72ba2115 Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sda1 * 1 30401 244196001 83 Linux Disk /dev/sdb: 320.1 GB, 320072933376 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 38913 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes Disk identifier: 0x00000001 Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sdb1 * 1 1275 10241406 7 HPFS/NTFS /dev/sdb2 1276 38913 302327235 5 Extended /dev/sdb5 1276 1784 4088511 83 Linux /dev/sdb6 1785 2293 4088511 82 Linux swap / Solaris /dev/sdb7 2294 3312 8185086 83 Linux /dev/sdb8 3313 3950 5124703+ 83 Linux /dev/sdb9 3951 7259 26579511 83 Linux /dev/sdb10 7260 7583 2602498+ 83 Linux /dev/sdb11 7584 21525 111989083+ 83 Linux /dev/sdb12 25526 38913 107539078+ 83 Linux /dev/sdb13 21526 25525 32129968+ 83 Linux Partition table entries are not in disk order Disk /dev/sdc: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes Disk identifier: 0x8aa3d05b Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sdc1 * 1 60801 488384001 83 Linux

Tried the following:

I see 2 possibilities here:

1. The hard drive is failing. I attempted to replace that drive with a reconditioned 1TB drive that I had. Initial installation of Mageia 1 went well, but while attempting to update, after about 10 minutes or so, the update failed claiming that the file system was marked read only. This happened several times. I tend to suspect the disc but it's possible that...

2. The motherboard is failing. The glacially slow POST bothers me. It can take several minutes to detect the drives. It can also take several minutes to produce the BIOS menus or the boot device menu if one of those options is selected on boot. Once a boot device is selected, or if I just let it boot, it eventually (I'm talking 5 - 10 minutes) kicks that boot device and proceeds to boot the CD or fail on the hard drive as described above. The pace at which the POST proceeds is not consistent from boot-to-boot. Some are slower than others.

I have another hd ordered and if that one misbehaves, I'll start looking to replace the mobo, but if anybody out there has any wisdom on this before I start throwing time and money at it, I'd appreciate hearing from you about it.

Thanks much.

Mark

by **JoesCat** » Jan 5th, '12, 10:43

When I boot into a GUI (Mageia live CD) I can use the partition manager to see /dev/sdb8 (/boot) full of the files and directories that you would see in the /boot directory. They're all there. But when I boot the Magia DVD into rescue mode and mount all the existing partitions under /mnt, I can see the /mnt/boot partition in the terminal, but it is empty.

If you think about this, this is correct behaviour. Under normal circumstances, when you boot-up, /boot is an empty directory in partition assigned to "/", and then it gets linked to /dev/sdb8 (according to the information posted in /etc/fstab) so that you then see the contents of /dev/sdb8.

to put it in another perspective, image you created a directory /mnt/x and if you look in /mnt/x it will appear empty, but if you were to then do:
mount /dev/sd_something /mnt/x

You would then see something in /mnt/x (which is whatever contents is in /dev/sd_something

If you see SMART reporting a poor drive, you should look at replacing the drive. You may start getting corrupt/fragments/sectors and not know it until some time later. Because of this, I find file systems that do a diskcheck every time your computer boots up will be quicker in pointing-out an error than file systems that do a cursory-quick check. In this case, this is where file systems like ext2 have an advantage over other file systems like perhaps ext3 or ext4 or any of the others that don't do a complete check (which is one reason ext2 boots up slower than other file systems, but in this case worth the trouble).

Did a quick look at your steps 1..6, but you have to think, is it worth your time trying to fix a partition on a drive that is crumbling around you, or is it just best to extract whatever latest files are of most value to you (if possible), and collect the rest from whatever backups you have been making in the past. 99% of the time nobody needs a backup, but it's times like this is when you are glad you've done one (or preferably many on a continuous rolling basis).

by **mark9117** » Jan 5th, '12, 17:14

Thanks for the reply JoseCat. I replaced the drive and it resolved all the boot issues. I have the drive in an external enclosure and it seems fine, but obviously there was an issue. Incidentally, the SMART info for this drive was fine. Seatools was telling me it was failing. As near as I could gather it was just suffering from old age and limited air flow (heat). That drive was at least six years old. It's behind me now.

Thanks again.

Mark

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