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Showing posts from June, 2019

Re- format the Disks, Created New Partitions

It is a hardware failure but it wasn't the disks. It was the cables. Then I had to use fsck several times and just could not get my metadata back. It was too corrupted by the time I sorted everything out. It's time to start from scratch. Used fdisk to delete the partition. Format the disks to lvm filesystems. Then created pv's and vg over the metal disks. Formatted the partition to ext4. Mounted the logical volumes on the proper mounts inside the /home directory. Modified my /etc/fstab one last time I hope. Reboot. When I looked at the file manager I knew it wasn't finished yet. I used the root directory when I created the lv and mounted it with root. Now that I am in my user account ownership is messed up. I chown from root to user with the R flag. That's it.

Repairing Damaged Partition

Linux automatically checks filesystems while booting. It will prompt you of problems and puts you in the emergency shell so you can intervene if there's a problem. I have a bad superblock on one or two of my logical volumes (lv). See last post. Reboot didn't work. It's a bad superblock. I have to repair the damaged file system. Use a backup superblock. Then repair it with e2fsck command. Then repair it with e2fsck command until I can mount it clean. I am in a bit of a problem. fsck and e2fsck commands are unable to fix the problem. I am reviewing the logs and dmesg. I am beginning to have a nasty suspicion that my hard drives are ok. My SMART logs are showing all disks are all passing their tests. So if the disks are not the problem the most obvious should be - the cables. I shut down the computer. Re-fixed all cables. I have to remind myself to NOT buy cheap cables again. Rebooting confirmed my suspicion.

Booting Issues With Arch

Most Linux distros are transparent when it comes to their booting process. Users actually see the process as it scrolls down lines and text before it presents a login screen. This is more so in Arch. What I see on the screen is systemd checking the file systems as listed in my /etc/fstab file. All is fine when you see a green colored OK to the left of the line. What I read was the word "failed" somewhere and the next thing I knew was I was being kicked into an emergency shell. Happened to me before, I said. But then it tells me my root account is locked. I forgot for a while that I did lock the root account because I was told it is a secuity risk and I did not need to keep a root account. I can just use sudo they said. I now find myself with an aborted boot process, on a console and I can't open the root account to do some troubleshooting with my system. What's worse is I'm in this loop where this script is trying to help me by suggesting I press Enter. And when I

Imee's First Steps with the New Leg

She got her new prosthetic legs from the Mabuhay Deseret Foundation and the help from the local government of San Mateo, Rizal.