Power failure during Slack9 setup

[John Schulz]

The title 'bout says it.

Slackware 9.0 setup was proceeding from my bootable CD just fine.
My NIC was detected, partitions were mounted, /etc/fstab configured;
you name it.

Then the power dropped for just long enough to crash the setup which
had only been running 20 seconds, tops. It had only installed the
first 3 or 4 packages in the 'a' series. I rebooted without the CD to
see what remained of my Slackware 8.0 (2.2.19? kernel) install and
hoping the "not cleanly unmounted. Check forced" message would appear
and clean up any problems created by kicking the chair out from under
the disk.

There were no boot errors and I could still login but glibc was now
missing so everything dependent on that failed. I decided I'd luckily
gotten away cleanly and waited until all risk of power failure had
passed to begin the install anew.

During this second install the black console screen started
scrolling errors like:
[Pkg name? Not sure] ext2_bad_block: free blocks [and something] do
not match

Sometimes it would only be 2 or 3 such messages other times it would
be 4 pages.

I now cannot login. ANY string of text causes an error from crypt
complaining about too short a login. CTRL-ALT-DEL at the login causes
a "You do not exist. Go away." error.

I began the install again, this time choosing to do the "slow
format, checks for bad blocks" on both partitions. No complaints
about the drives but I got the same error messages again.

Luckily, I can still use the bootable CD to login as root and mount
the 3 ext2 partitions. Even more luckily, I'm not worried about any
data on the 3 partitions, so a complete format can be done if need be.

So, how do I:
1)Fix any damage on the drives
OR
2)Re-format, or otherwise prepare, the drives to accept the
installation?

Sorry if the message is too long. Thanks for any help.

..john

[David]

John Schulz wrote:

> The title 'bout says it.
>
> Slackware 9.0 setup was proceeding from my bootable CD just fine.
> My NIC was detected, partitions were mounted, /etc/fstab configured;
> you name it.
>
> Then the power dropped for just long enough to crash the setup which
> had only been running 20 seconds, tops. It had only installed the
> first 3 or 4 packages in the 'a' series. I rebooted without the CD to
> see what remained of my Slackware 8.0 (2.2.19? kernel) install and
> hoping the "not cleanly unmounted. Check forced" message would appear
> and clean up any problems created by kicking the chair out from under
> the disk.
>
> There were no boot errors and I could still login but glibc was now
> missing so everything dependent on that failed. I decided I'd luckily
> gotten away cleanly and waited until all risk of power failure had
> passed to begin the install anew.
>
> During this second install the black console screen started
> scrolling errors like:
> [Pkg name? Not sure] ext2_bad_block: free blocks [and something] do
> not match
>
> Sometimes it would only be 2 or 3 such messages other times it would
> be 4 pages.
>
> I now cannot login. ANY string of text causes an error from crypt
> complaining about too short a login. CTRL-ALT-DEL at the login causes
> a "You do not exist. Go away." error.
>
> I began the install again, this time choosing to do the "slow
> format, checks for bad blocks" on both partitions. No complaints
> about the drives but I got the same error messages again.
>
> Luckily, I can still use the bootable CD to login as root and mount
> the 3 ext2 partitions. Even more luckily, I'm not worried about any
> data on the 3 partitions, so a complete format can be done if need be.
>
> So, how do I:
> 1)Fix any damage on the drives
> OR
> 2)Re-format, or otherwise prepare, the drives to accept the
> installation?

Boot from the bootable CD and wipe the drive.

!!!! WARNING !!!!
!!!! THIS WILL DELETE ALL PARTITIONS !!!!
!!!! IT WILL WIPE THE DRIVE AND REMOVE ALL DATA !!!!

!!!! YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED !!!!

cat /dev/zero >/dev/hdX

Where hdX would be the correct drive or partition ie.(hda, hda4)
This will take several minutes depending on the size of the
drive. Then try the install again being sure to format the
partitions.

--
Confucius: He who play in root, eventually kill tree.
Registered with The Linux Counter. [url]http://counter.li.org/[/url]
Slackware 9.0 Kernel 2.4.22 i686 (GCC) 3.3
Uptime: 2 days, 17:30, 1 user, load average: 1.22, 1.35, 1.35

[John Schulz]

> > Then the power dropped for just long enough to crash the setup which

> > had only been running 20 seconds, tops. It had only installed the
> > first 3 or 4 packages in the 'a' series. I rebooted without the CD to
> > see what remained of my Slackware 8.0 (2.2.19? kernel) install and
> > hoping the "not cleanly unmounted. Check forced" message would appear
> > and clean up any problems created by kicking the chair out from under
> > the disk.
> >
> >
> > So, how do I:
> > 1)Fix any damage on the drives
> > OR
> > 2)Re-format, or otherwise prepare, the drives to accept the
> > installation?

>
> Boot from the bootable CD and wipe the drive.
>
> !!!! WARNING !!!!
> !!!! THIS WILL DELETE ALL PARTITIONS !!!!
> !!!! IT WILL WIPE THE DRIVE AND REMOVE ALL DATA !!!!
>
> !!!! YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED !!!!
>
> cat /dev/zero >/dev/hdX
>
> Where hdX would be the correct drive or partition ie.(hda, hda4)
> This will take several minutes depending on the size of the
> drive. Then try the install again being sure to format the
> partitions.

I just ran e2fsck and corrected the errors.

thanks.j