Cannot fully start bubba anymore, some services available

[habrys]

I restarted bubba yesterday, after a few months of uninterrupted busy uptime. Sadly it didn't boot completely, the led never stopped blinking. I tried to wait about 1 hour or so and tried again (unplugging and then plugging the power cord again, since the shut down button doesn't work anymore). No luck.

Then I unplugged the power cord, waited about an hour to cool the unit completely and plugged the cord again. It "starts" since about 10 hours now and the led still blinks.

I know, I can flash via usb, but I got over 700 GB of data stored there and it'd take ages to back it somewhere up, even assuming I'm able to find so much free space somewhere else. So I'm looking for a solution which doesn't require formatting of hdd.

Here some details, which could be helpful:
1. The hdd works all the time (red led inside the case blinks) - because of ftd probably.
2. I've had 2 pretty heavy downloads going before the restart - nearly 9 GB altogether. It seems, that ftd works again normally on these torrents - I can see the led where bubba is connected to my router blinking heavily, as always when something is downloaded. Until about 2 hours after restart this led wasn't blinking. I think the ftd was checking the torrents then, as usually after crash or restart. Big files can take a while.
3. All my smb and nfs shares can be mounted. I have access to all files, except the os files.

So far, so good. But...
4. I cannot access the web interface, so apache is probably down.
5. And the worst: I cannot start an ssh session. ssh connects and then says:

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System bootup in progress - please wait
Connection to bubba closed.

So I'm pretty much blind. Any ideas?

[6feet5]

Hi,

I managed to mess things up once and felt I had too much data and too little time to back it up. I solved it by modifying the image file so it doesn't format and partition the disk, but instead restore selected parts. Here's a short step by step, assuming you're running a sarge install on your bubba and you have access to a linux machine (if you're on windows then I have no clue what to do, maybe coLinux, VMWare or VirtualBox will help). You could do it on bubba but that requires you to log on to it.

DISCLAIMER: You use the following information at your own risk. It was partly written from memory and my memory appears to have a non-stick coating with a too slow refresh rate causing memory loss from time to time. Seriously, important steps may be missing so read it carefully and make sure you understand what I mean, not what I write

• 0. Back up what you can from bubba, like settings from files in /etc and what ever you can think of that will be lost (think hard, not like me, I always forget something important).

• 1. Download image file.

• 2. Make a temporary folder to mount it onto

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  mkdir /tmp/bubba_rescue

• 3. Mount it using the loop device

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  mount <img path> /tmp/bubba_rescue -o loop

  where <img path> is the path to the downloaded image file. (You may need to be root to mount it)

• 4. Open /tmp/bubba_rescue/bin/bubbainstall.sh in your editor of choice.

• 5. Remove the sections that partitions the disk, creates the swap space and formats the disk.

• 6. Add lines that remove all top folders BUT /home and /var and add lines that remove all sub folder in /var BUT /var/samba (that's your shared files). Something like:

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  rm -Rf /bin
  rm -Rf /etc

  and so on. Verify all entries to make sure you don't delete something meant to be kept.

• 7. Save the file

• 8. Unmount the loop device

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  umount /tmp/bubba_resque

That's it, a modified image file. Use this one instead and you will hopefully end up with a clean system with your /home folder intact.

Once again, use it at your own risk. If you want to play it safe(r), wait a day or two, allowing other readers to review my instructions and correct possible errors.

/Johan

[habrys]

That's a great idea, why didn't I think about it myself? Thanks for excellent advice, 6feet5. Yes, I use Ubuntu for daily work and XP only for games, so no problem here. And I'm brave enough and also know my way around Linux enough to give it a try

Thanks again!

[Eek]

There is also a rescue image that can be downloaded from excito: http://update.excito.net/install/minimal/
see http://forum.excito.net/viewtopic.php?t=524
cheers
Eek

[habrys]

I'd just like to let you know guys, that your help saved me like a week of backing up of my files. I used the method of 6feet5 with one small change. I stored all the system directories somewhere else instead of just removing them. Like this:

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mv /bin /old.system/bin
mv /etc /old.system/etc

Just in case It went very well, I got a fully functional system again, without losing of my 700GB of data

Thanks again!