[Preston] can you recommend some local help?

[Kevin Porter]

Thanks for the advice Richard!

Unfortunately it's out of my hands now. My shells froze during the e2fsck
check and I can't log back in.
All I can do now is wait for UK2's technical support team to get back to
me... god knows when that will be!

I'm only up here (Leyland) about half the time as I work in Northants
mostly, but I will keep an eye on the PLUG site and maybe attend a meeting
some time...

Thanks again mate!

- Kev


-----Original Message-----
From: Richard Boardman [mailto:R.P.BOARDMAN at soton.ac.uk]
Sent: 22 December 2005 12:35
To: kev at 9ballpool.co.uk
Cc: preston at mailman.lug.org.uk
Subject: Re: [Preston] can you recommend some local help?


Hi Kevin,

> So since I found you, maybe someone could recommend to me a good local
> individual/company who can help me with some disaster recovery at very
short
> notice. Like today :)

It's been a while since I've lived around Preston way (but I remain
nostalgic lurking on the list!) so I can't help there. However, depending
on how valuable the data is (and how much one is willing to spend getting
it sorted out) you could contact OnTrack [http://www.ontrack.co.uk/] who
might be able to bail you out if all else fails.

> I have a trashed filesystem on a live website (Debian Linux), ie very
> urgent. I'm checking the filesystem with e2fsck but to be honest I'm going
> to be slightly out of my depth when I come to run the repair... so any
> recommendations would be appreciated :)

Before you go any further, I would suggest imaging the drive with
something like:

  dd if=/dev/hda of=broken_disk_image conv=noerror,sync

(assuming /dev/hda is the disk containing the suspect ext2 partition),
then at least you have a copy of it should anything else go wrong. I have
no experience of recovering borked ext2 partitions, only reiser, so I
can't really help you beyond this, though Google seems to yield some handy
links. dd'ing the partition itself (e.g. /dev/hda2) might be sensible too,
then you could try to mount the image with mount -t ext2 -o loop
broken_partition_image /mnt/fix. At least then you wouldn't be disturbing
the 'master copy' with any tools you might try.

http://homepage.smc.edu/morgan_david/cs40/analyze-ext2.htm
http://www.unixwiz.net/techtips/recovering-ext2.html
http://www.guzu.net/linux/e2retrieve.php
http://e2salvage.sourceforge.net/

(Links courtesy of Google)

Good luck!

Cheers,
Rich


Dr Richard Boardman                             o o o o o
Computational Engineering and Design Group      o o o o o
School of Engineering Sciences                  o o o o o
University of Southampton                       o o o o o
United Kingdom                                  o o o o o