Hi there. I recently got an external USB hard drive, turned it from
vfat into ext3, and was merrily rsync'ing a load of stuff onto it when
the whole system went down. And wouldn't boot up again -- internal
hard drive not found. Can anyone think of a way that the USB drive
might have caused this? Or is it just a random internal hard disk
failure, and a complete coincidence? I also recently got a new
flat-screen monitor, but I'm ruling that out.

Thanks in advance,

Glenn

On 3 Sep 2006 03:24:09 -0700, "Glenn Hutchings" <zondo42@googlemail.com> wrote:

>Hi there. I recently got an external USB hard drive, turned it from
>vfat into ext3, and was merrily rsync'ing a load of stuff onto it when
>the whole system went down. And wouldn't boot up again -- internal
>hard drive not found. Can anyone think of a way that the USB drive
>might have caused this? Or is it just a random internal hard disk
>failure, and a complete coincidence? I also recently got a new
>flat-screen monitor, but I'm ruling that out.

You running SATA drives? Unplug USB drive while booting.

You got the rsync backwards and wiped local drive from USB -- that
would be a possibility? Stuff happens

Otherwise, please provide some solid info like dmesg output, look
at the logs, etc.

Grant.
--
http://bugsplatter.mine.nu/

Grant wrote:
> You running SATA drives? Unplug USB drive while booting.

Tried that just after it happened; still does the same thing. What
difference would a SATA drive make?

> You got the rsync backwards and wiped local drive from USB -- that
> would be a possibility? Stuff happens

Nope. I was monitoring it as it was going, and it was definitely
mirroring the right files. Plus I was only mirroring /usr/local --
nothing system-critical in there.

> Otherwise, please provide some solid info like dmesg output, look
> at the logs, etc.

Er, dmesg might be possible with a rescue disk, but seeing as I can't
mount the root partition, the logs look a bit inaccessible. Unless you
know a way I don't...

Glenn

On 3 Sep 2006 07:24:59 -0700, "Glenn Hutchings" <zondo42@googlemail.com> wrote:

>Grant wrote:
>> You running SATA drives? Unplug USB drive while booting.
>
>Tried that just after it happened; still does the same thing. What
>difference would a SATA drive make?

Detection order of /dev/sdX? Maybe BIOS tried booting USB drive?
>
>> You got the rsync backwards and wiped local drive from USB -- that
>> would be a possibility? Stuff happens
>
>Nope. I was monitoring it as it was going, and it was definitely
>mirroring the right files. Plus I was only mirroring /usr/local --
>nothing system-critical in there.

Unless you effectively copied /usr/local -> /
>
>> Otherwise, please provide some solid info like dmesg output, look
>> at the logs, etc.
>
>Er, dmesg might be possible with a rescue disk, but seeing as I can't
>mount the root partition, the logs look a bit inaccessible. Unless you
>know a way I don't...

Not looking over your shoulder, so can only guess, if it was a box here
I'd boot some install/rescue CDROM and have a look around, maybe temp
install HDD from target to another box for a look -- lots of options...

Grant.
--
http://bugsplatter.mine.nu/