Computer Problems, Continued

This post and comments were getting to be too much, so I’m starting a new one.

So when we last left our intrepid hero, he couldn’t reinstall grub because the shell wouldn’t talk to the Internet.

So I rebooted the live USB again, and after I did so, I could ping the net. So I went to this suggested page, and tried to do what it said, but his lsblk issues this tree:

nvme0n1              259:0    0   477G  0 disk  
├─nvme0n1p1          259:1    0   200M  0 part
├─nvme0n1p2          259:2    0     1G  0 part
└─nvme0n1p3          259:3    0 475,8G  0 part

And mine issues this one:

loop0                             7:0    0   1.8G  1 loop 
loop1                             7:1    0   7.5G  1 loop 
├─live-rw                       253:3    0   7.5G  0 dm   /
└─live-base                     253:4    0   7.5G  1 dm   
loop2                             7:2    0    32G  0 loop 
└─live-rw                       253:3    0   7.5G  0 dm   /
sda                               8:0    0 232.9G  0 disk 
├─sda1                            8:1    0   200M  0 part 
├─sda2                            8:2    0     1G  0 part 
└─sda3                            8:3    0 231.7G  0 part 
  ├─fedora_localhost--live-swap 253:0    0  15.4G  0 lvm  
  ├─fedora_localhost--live-home 253:1    0 146.3G  0 lvm  
  └─fedora_localhost--live-root 253:2    0    70G  0 lvm  
sdb                               8:16   0   1.8T  0 disk 
└─sdb1                            8:17   0   1.8T  0 part 
sdc                               8:32   0  55.9G  0 disk 
sdd                               8:48   1  14.9G  0 disk 
├─sdd1                            8:49   1   1.9G  0 part /run/initramfs/live
├─sdd2                            8:50   1  10.9M  0 part 
└─sdd3                            8:51   1  22.9M  0 part 
zram0                           252:0    0     4G  0 disk [SWAP]

sda is where my OS lives. sda1 is boot, sda3 is the filesystem which I need to mount and chroot to. He mounts his nvme0n1p3 to /mnt/sysimage, but when I try to mount sda3, it complains that it doesn’t know what an LVM is.

lvdisplay yields:

— Logical volume —
LV Path /dev/fedora_localhost-live/swap
LV Name swap
VG Name fedora_localhost-live
LV UUID CkUOFz-BR7Y-6SUy-1ggT-Vxjt-JDMm-ah50Xi
LV Write Access read/write
LV Creation host, time localhost-live, 2019-05-23 14:09:04 -0400
LV Status available
# open 0
LV Size <15.38 GiB
Current LE 3936
Segments 1
Allocation inherit
Read ahead sectors auto

  • currently set to 256
    Block device 253:0 — Logical volume —
    LV Path /dev/fedora_localhost-live/home
    LV Name home
    VG Name fedora_localhost-live
    LV UUID rLEkCx-UPRx-8EkQ-PH1g-taq6-AB5M-Pb0HcE
    LV Write Access read/write
    LV Creation host, time localhost-live, 2019-05-23 14:09:04 -0400
    LV Status available open 0 LV Size 146.31 GiB
    Current LE 37456
    Segments 1
    Allocation inherit
    Read ahead sectors auto
  • currently set to 256
    Block device 253:1 — Logical volume —
    LV Path /dev/fedora_localhost-live/root
    LV Name root
    VG Name fedora_localhost-live
    LV UUID o8Pi0J-kMhW-YDNL-iMn6-VS9c-3rLb-avH7Io
    LV Write Access read/write
    LV Creation host, time localhost-live, 2019-05-23 14:09:08 -0400
    LV Status available open 0 LV Size 70.00 GiB
    Current LE 17920
    Segments 1
    Allocation inherit
    Read ahead sectors auto
  • currently set to 256
    Block device 253:2

/dev/fedora_localhost-live/root appears to be the system, but when I mount it, it doesn’t have the files I’d expect. So what now?

8 thoughts on “Computer Problems, Continued”

  1. Ugh. The fedora page he links to might be a little closer to your configuration, but…

    What does “blkid” show? I think that well tell us more about what the format of each partition is.

    I believe what’s going on here is that sda1 is EFI (initial boot loader, more or less?); sda2 is /boot, the ‘main’ boot loader; and sda3 is probably a set of logical volumes maybe? If that’s the case you should be able to mount sda1 and 2 and likely somewhere in sda2 grub boot config files is the magic info needed to mount sda3 (but I don’t know enough about GRUB and LVM2 offhand to tell you what that would look like or how to use it).

    So I’d try something like
    mkdir /tmp/oldsys
    mkdir /tmp/oldsys/sda1 /tmp/oldsys/sda2
    mount -o ro /dev/sda1 /tmp/oldsys/sda1
    mount -o ro /dev/sda2 /tmp/oldsys/sda2

    And go looking for some kind of interesting grub.conf.
    Caveat lector, YMMV.

  2. And it could well be that somebody more familiar with LVM2 administration can tell you straight away how to just mount those, I don’t know :/

  3. Rand, over the years Bob Zimmerman has come close on a few occasions to convincing me to take the Linux plunge but you always talk me down from the ledge. 🙂

  4. Are you still running dual Operating Systems on a single computer?

    Are you trying to do that on this problem machine?

    I’ve heard nothing but trouble from people who try to do that and they give it up. Machines are so cheap if you want a Linux box – buy a linux box

    Want Windoze? Buy a Windozes box

    1. It is not, and never as been a dual-boot machine. It is a Linux box which runs Windows as a guest in a virtual machine. That has nothing to do with this problem.

  5. ok ok ok. I feel guilty and can’t leave you stranded.

    1) FIRST. I have to admit I know nothing about Grub2. I knew Grub a bit at one time but have forgotten most of what I knew. So. That being said your best course of action IMO would be a call to RedHat support and see what they’d charge to help you out. Fedora after all is RH beta. IF you are insistent on restoring your boot as opposed to a re-install.

    2) If you are too stubborn or too cheap (lol) to follow the advice in #1, then there is the GNU Grub manual here.

    https://www.gnu.org/software/grub/manual/grub/grub.pdf

    You might be able to glean enough here IF you can boot into a Grub prompt to restore your boot partitions. This manual seems light on EFI and LVMs however, so again I refer you back to Step #1.

    3) FWIW I think your disk ought to be totally recoverable. IF you know the right steps. Unfortunately I don’t. (See Step 1).

    4) Try Tom’s Hardware Forum:
    They almost certainly will be able to screw up your disk far better than we can if you insist on not doing Step 1.

    https://forums.tomshardware.com/

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