forums.xandros.com

[kalwisti]

Hi,

I would appreciate any help or advice in solving this problem -- as well as what might have caused it, and how I can avoid it in the future. Unfortunately, I think I'm facing the prospect of having to reinstall Xandros from scratch. I tried to take some notes as this was happening, but I missed a lot of info ... I'm very disappointed, discouraged and feeling like a total idiot.

Apologies in advance for the length of this post, but I'd like to provide as many details as possible in order to help the experts troubleshoot this.

Background (Possible Cause[s])

Xandros 4 (Home Ed. - Premium, with SP1 installed) was running fine for me. I was dual-booting with Windows 98 SE but using Xandros almost exclusively since Thanksgiving 2006.

Does one of the possibilities below seem to be the most likely cause? Or is it maybe the cumulative effect of these?

A. About a month ago, we had a temporary power outage. I was using the PC at the time and obviously couldn't shut it down properly. When the power was restored and I turned the machine back on, everything seemed to work normally.

B. About a week ago, I tried out a Knoppix Run Live CD from a Marcel Gagne book ("Moving to Linux"), just to see what it looked like. Although I followed his instructions, and it ran fine for the brief time I used it, when I exited the CD, I was greeted with a black screen that said something like "NTFR leader not found." I thought that maybe it had altered the BIOS settings, so I searched the forum, read how to reset them and changed the settings. After that, the OS appeared to be running fine.

My understanding is that the Knoppix CD was a safe way of trying out this distro because it runs from the CD and does not alter any of the computer's settings. I didn't create a swap file or change anything that I know of ...

C. Tonight I tried to burn a copy of a CD-ROM which has OpenOffice.org ver. 1.1 on it. (This is a commercially produced CD from one of the public library's OOo books). I began the process by inserting it into the machine's DVD Writer (as I've successfully done before with other discs). As per Xandros' recommendation, no other applications were running. It began to check the media but was taking a long time. I waited 10-15 minutes but nothing was happening, and the dialog box on the screen was completely frozen/locked -- as was the mouse. So I tried shutting down the process with Ctrl-Alt-Delete -- and then when that didn't work -- tried Ctrl-Alt-Backspace. Still frozen, and the mouse wouldn't respond at all, so I hit the PC's reset button.

The computer booted into Xandros; I waited a few minutes and tried to copy the CD-ROM again, thinking it was a temporary glitch. This was probably the Beginning of the End ... It behaved exactly as described in the paragraph above, so I hit the reset button again.

Kernel Panic

This time, however, after the initial Xandros splash screen (Lilo?), the screen hung, and at a black screen I got the message:

[jimallyn]

First of all, the good news: you can probably rescue your data.

What caused the problem? It's hard to say. The problem could have started with that power outage. Or you may have some hardware failure in your computer; perhaps the hard drive is going bad.

I have often saved data from crashed systems and damaged hard drives using Puppy Linux. You boot into Puppy Linux from the CD, mount the hard drive with the utility on the desktop, explore around and find your stuff, and burn it to CDs. Or if you've got another hard drive in the computer, copy it to the other drive. Or if your data is small enough to fit in a Gmail account (currently they have just under 3 gigs of storage per account), you can email the stuff to yourself!

You might also be able to repair the damage if it just has some corrupted sectors. Xandros uses the Reiser file system, and there is a utility to check and repair Reiser file systems called reiserfsck. I don't recall for sure if reiserfsck is on the Puppy Linux CD, but it is definitely on the System Rescue CD (sysreccd). What I've done in the past is, first read the info or man page in reiserfsck to get an idea how it works. Then run reiserfsck --check on the drive, and it will usually give you some information as to what is wrong and what is needed to fix it. For example, on one drive it told me to run it with the --fix-fixable option, on another, it told me to run it with the --rebuild-tree option. One hard drive was recoverable, and I ran Xandros 3 off that drive for months afterwards. (It later failed completely, which I suspected it was going to do.) The other one, although reiserfsck told me it was not able to repair the file system, I had already been able to recover most of the files from it with Puppy Linux.

Is this an unusual event? Yes, definitely. There are lots of people running Xandros and other Linux versions who have never had any problem like this.

Ask questions if you need more detail, but it's probably really best if you read the manuals for reiserfsck and such and get a feel for it yourself. The first time I had to recover a drive this way, I printed out everything I could find on this stuff, and had 5 or 6 pages of info in front of me when I started.

P.S. Others will probably chime in with their own suggestions, you might wait until you get some other options before working on recovering the drive.

Jim
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[kalwisti]

Hi, Jim,

Many, many thanks for the info. At least now I have an idea how to get started trying to recover from this. I'll also wait to see what advice/suggestions others might have. I'm heading off to work soon, so I won't be able to try anything until tonight. I'll do some searching on the man pages for reiserfsck and put the office's laser printer to work ...

As for the hard drive, I don't know if this means anything, but it is working OK on the Windows 98 side. I used it some last night after I'd shut down completely and just let the PC sit for an hour or so. (BTW, I still get the kernel panic in Xandros 4 with the same error message). The drive doesn't seem to be any noisier than usual, nor is it making any unusual sounds (grinding, scraping, pinging, etc.)

Thanks a bunch,
=david

[scott]

If you have to re install you should get an option if you what to save your /home and /root files click yes once the new istall is done you will find a folder labeled "username home" the same for root. Anything that is in these two will still be there. I'm thinking that maybe trying to install OO from the CD was the culpit. Xandros Networks has the last there, it is always best to install though XN. Yes you will need to be online to use it.
Hope this helps.
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[kalwisti]

Hi, Scott,

Many thanks for your advice also. I was wondering whether it was possible to save my Home folder; it's reassuring to know that it is.

I'm gathering info at this point on reiserfsck, the System Rescue CD and Puppy Linux that Jim recommended. I have a recently purchased USB thumb drive (512 MB) that I brought to work and can transfer data to, although I can't burn CD-ROMs on my office PC, so I'll have to figure that one out at home -- how to burn a CD-ROM under Windows 98. I do have a CD-ROM of Knoppix that maybe could work . . . I will print everything off and read it at leisure.

Oh, and about the OOo CD-ROM: I should have been clearer. I was not trying to install it, but to simply make an exact copy in order to pass it along to some friends who might like to try OOo. (I already had OOo v. 2.x installed on the computer, as it came on the Applications CD with my Xandros 4 boxed set).

This experience reminds me of a line of dialogue from the Jean-Jacques Beineix (sp?) film "Diva," in which Jules, the protagonist, remarks:

"On est vraiment peu de chose ..."
('We are indeed insignificant')

Thanks very much for your help,
=david

[kalwisti]

Hi, I just wanted to provide an update ...

Problem Solved

My problem has now been solved. As Jim suspected, it was due to a hardware problem: six bad blocks on my Maxtor hard drive (logical blocks 1605-1610). I would like to thank both him and Scott for their suggestions, as well as other Xandros users who posted about similar problems with their HDs and the use of reiserfsck. I was lucky that a downloaded diagnostic/repair utility (Maxtor PowerMax 4.23) successfully repaired the bad blocks and I am relieved to have my Xandros OS back in working condition. Hooray!

Although I still am mystified as to what caused this, if Jim's other suspicion is correct, I will hope for no more power outages to occur while I'm using the computer ... At the very end of the post, I have several questions which the experts can perhaps answer for me.

In case this might be of help to someone with a similar problem in the future, I took notes as I slowly tried to work through the problem. It's probably not the most efficient approach, but at least it worked. I apologize in advance for the length; feel free to stop here if this is not of interest to you.

---------------

1. I printed off the man pages for reiserfsck and read through them, although it was written in geekspeak and a lot of it went over my head.

2. I thoroughly searched the Xandros Forums for info or advice on using reiserfsck, cut-and-pasted them to a word processing file and printed that off for reference.

3. I already had a Knoppix CD on hand, so I started with it. My Xandros installation is on the partition hda4. (The Windows 98 data and programs were on hda1 and hda5). I booted the computer into Knoppix. When I tried to mount hda4, I read the message:

[Doctore]

High temperatures in many computer cases can cause bad blocks on the harddisk/s that
are in use. The best way to prevent this is to have good ventilation in the case.

Lowlevelformatting the harddrive might help, but usually bad blocks is an sign of an failing drive.

Have had these problems to often with Maxtor drives earlier, so stopped using them. Cant
say if quality is better now after Seagate bought Maxtor. Have mostly been using Seagate and
Western Digital harddisks since. At least there have been lesser RMA:S .


Doctore

[kalwisti]

Hi, Doctore,

Thanks for your reply, although my hard drive's prognosis does not sound good. I'll keep my fingers crossed, hope for the best and be on the lookout for the HD "growing" more bad sectors. And start window-shopping for a new HD; I did follow the "Who makes drives that don't suck?" thread closely.

In case it's helpful to anyone else, I found a couple of mini-articles which confirm your assessment:

http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/geom/formatDefect-c.html
Defect mapping and spare sectoring
From Charles Kozierok's The PC Guide

http://www.pcguide.com/ts/x/comp/hdd/errorsBadSectors-c.html
Troubleshooting hard disk drives -- errors : bad sectors
From Charles Kozierok's The PC Guide

Unfortunately, low-level formatting (or zero-fill) is not an option for me if I want to keep my Windows 98 installation on the HD. I bought this PC from a charitable organization (Goodwill) which reassembled/refurbished it as part of the MAR (Microsoft Authorized Refurbisher) Program. So it came with a functional OS and some other software but I don't have any of the original installation CDs. If Windows becomes corrupted or unusuable, I'd have no way to reinstall it.

(Here is a FAQ on the MAR Program:
http://www.techsoup.org/mar/marFaq.aspx )

Now, as my confidence with and knowledge of Linux increases, maybe at some point it would be possible to delete Windows altogether and put a second Linux distro on the hard drive?

As for case ventilation, I'm guessing that it's OK. The PC was assembled by a qualified technician (or someone being trained as one), so hopefully they made allowances for sufficient ventilation.

One last question: Would you recommend running reiserfsck regularly to monitor the hard's drive health? Can it detect developing problems, or only detect them after they occur?

Thanks, =david

[jimallyn]

[kalwisti]

Hi, Jim,

Thanks for your response and for seconding Doctore's opinion. Hmm, it doesn't sound too promising but I'm still happy to be back using Xandros. I will closely monitor for newly developing bad blocks.

As for specs on the HD, it is a Maxtor 40 GB generic IDE hard drive. I don't know its age (since I bought the PC used) and haven't yet opened the case to see if there might be a date of manufacture stamped somewhere. The specs reported by the PowerMax diagnostic utility are as follows:

Maxtor 2F040L0
Serial #: F1CH4BCE
Firmware: VAM51JJ0
Cylinders: 79656
Heads: 16
SPT: 63
Maximum LBA: 80293248

I will start investigating what sort of HD to get as a possible replacement. I did read the thread you suggested ... We have a Seagate Barracuda 80 GB external HD (actually, it is an internal HD mounted in a USB external HD enclosure) we are using on the iMac for backup. It is about a year old, is quiet and has worked well so far (although it has not been used heavily).

When I was searching for an external HD, I read a lot on the Web and it was discouraging; it seemed that 90% of the material was horror stories about failed drives, uninterested customer service representatives, general hassles, etc. None of the major manufacturers escaped unscathed: Maxtor, Seagate, Hitachi, et al.

If I need to replace the HD, our next-door neighbor has experience building PCs from scratch and maybe I could ask for his help installing the drive. If we're lucky, it shouldn't be a big deal, right?

=david

[Davepet]

Just to add my $.02:
I doubt the power failure was a factor, ReiserFS is a journelling filesystem so it rarely has problems with power outages.

It *is* conceivable that the lockups while trying to duplicate that disk could have caught the filesystem at a bad moment & those blocks just got their data corrupted. If that's the case, your hard drive may last for many years. However, if your data is important to you make sure you back it up regularly (a good idea anyway).

Also keep an eye out for potential problems & remember that hard drives are fairly inexpensive these days...might be worthwhile installing Xandros on a new HD & keep that one for the occasions you need windows.

While that site you linked to says:

[TekMate]

Bad blocks are not bad data, bad blocks are physical sections of the disk that have failed. In some cases they are a the first signs your disk is about to fail in others they are perfectly normal. Every disk has some these are locked out by the manufacturer when they build it.
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[kalwisti]

Hi, Davepet and TekMate,

Thank you both for your responses; I appreciate your helpfulness. Thus far the HD is still working OK and I run a reiserfsck on it once a day. It's reporting "No corruptions found." (Knock on wood).

Dave, thanks for the tip about c\windows\options\cabs. I checked for that by booting back into Windows 98 and found a folder with that name. It had these files:

hh.exe
hhctrl.ocx
Html32.cnv
Kb918547.exe
(None of these files was very large)

I haven't had time to search the Web to find out what exactly these are. If they would allow me to reinstall Windows (if necessary), that would probably be good ... The problem I see is that the size of the Windows installation would prevent me from storing it on a CD-ROM; I'm not clear how I could copy it and temporarily store it until I could reinstall it on a second hard drive. Is there something like a Vulcan Mind Meld for computers?

=david

[Davepet]

Afraid that doesn't sound like what I'd hoped for. On my 2 dells & an older Compaq c\windows\options\cabs basically contains all the install files from the cd. It doesn't look that way on your system.

I guess it was worth a look....

Dave
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