think I botched my linux server :/

[Red Squirrel]

I've been trying to figure out a way to install a cdrom drive so I can do an acronis image of my linux server in case of disaster. Its more complicated then it sounds, because theres 3 IDE drives so its physically impossible to make the cable reach all the way to the cdroms.

So I bought this pc IDE card and installed it. But think it changed the order of the drives. Now Linux refuses to boot because my /data drive can't be found (probably not called hdc1 anymore) so its giving me this huge error that the superblocked is corrupted. Am I fucked? Or is it just the fact that the order got messed? Maybe the IDE card is actually taking proceedence over the mobo one. Either way, how can I actually boot into Linux now?

I still can't get the card to boot off a CD ROM drive so I can't use a rescue CD to edit the fstab to remove the other drives.

 

[Red Squirrel]

ok got it to boot, but is there any way to just disable the check for the other drives? I want to be able to boot then check which drives got named what, then just update fstab.

 

[Nothinman]

The only way to disable the check for non-root filesystems is to mark them non-auto in /etc/fstab and in that case you'll need to mount them manually after every boot.

This is why using either LVM or filesystem labels to specify filesystems is better than device names. LVM adds some other complications when moving volumes to other machines but if you're sure the drive will stay where it's at then it's simple.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Actually I saw that, some where named /data instead of /dev/hdc1 and what not, how do I do that? These were auto added by the OS. I recently changed a drive and had ran into complications like you said but then I just changed it to the /dev style, but what I like about the labels is its easier to know what drive is what, when booting using another media such as acronis.

Think I'll do that though, set them to not auto mount and have a script that runs early in the run level to mount it, at least if it can't mount the system keeps booting and then I can fix whatever is stopping it from mounting. The shell it throws me in otherwise is read only, so its quite useless.


I'll have to mess around in VMware with Linux drives to get better understanding how to deal with these types of disasters.

 

[DaiShan]

Originally posted by: RedSquirrel
ok got it to boot, but is there any way to just disable the check for the other drives? I want to be able to boot then check which drives got named what, then just update fstab.

If you are using a UDEV enabled kernel, you can use udev rules to name devices. I've never used it for a hard disk, but it works great for NIC's that have a tendency to switch device names on reboot