A cautionary tale...

joek · 2012-10-20 21:08:13

Just received a panicked phone call from my brother...
Some of you may recall reading at the beginning of this summer that I had crunchified my family's desktop in this thread http://crunchbanglinux.org/forums/topic … avens-for/
In October, I went off to university, elevated and my brother to sudo powers so that he can administer the desktop if anything breaks. (This is what literary critics call foreshadowing...)
He's just got his raspberrypi in the post, and was trying to burn ArchARM to an SD card so he can start to play with it. Unfortunately, with his incautious use of 'dd', he typed sda1 instead of sdb1. Whoops, goodbye root partition. Cue his phoning me to ask the best step. Fortunately, my statler cd was still in my room, so he went to get that and see if he could install via cd (which, if you read my last topic, you will recall we were having trouble with.) Fortunately, he has been able to boot the #! Statler cd, and I have just come off of the phone after spending 20 minutes talking him through installing #! without messing up the /home partition as well.
Makes me thankful that I followed my normal practice of having separate / and /home partitions, which I don't normally do.

Moral of the story: when using dd, double-check the device name you are using it with, and triple-check your typing...

schwim · 2012-10-20 21:14:19

joek wrote:

(This is what literary critics call foreshadowing...)

Hehe, that made me giggle.

Very glad you got it working!

joek · 2012-10-20 21:24:53

Glad I made you laugh...
Well, I got another phone call saying that the installer had kicked up an error, but he couldn't remember what it was. So I've got him to try and install it again, and if he gets an error to text me and tell me what it says. We shall see...
(If it persists in not working, I may have to start a thread in Help and Support as well...)

joek · 2012-10-21 09:31:55

UPDATE: The problem seems to be this one http://crunchbanglinux.org/forums/topic … o-install/
Brother is currently trying to work with the solutions suggested in this thread.

pvsage · 2012-10-21 17:09:22

First idea that comes to mind, if choosing to format / in the installer doesn't solve...boot into the live session and do this with Gparted:
1. Delete existing / partition.
2. Apply.
3. Create brand spankin' new / partition.
4. Apply.
(EDIT: Your brother should, of course, be able to do this without touching the existing /home partition.)

If this doesn't give your brother a clean target, I don't know what will. If Gparted screams at you about errors in the existing / partition, don't worry too much about that. If Gparted has trouble creating the new partition due to disk errors...
7077.frazer.jpg
(EDIT: If Gparted shows any errors for the existing /home partition...I dunno, maybe somebody else here has experience rescuing data. Sounds like your unclean target is / though, so fingers crossed.)

Last edited by pvsage (2012-10-21 17:12:41)

el_koraco · 2012-10-21 17:30:34

If he used dd, he has overwritten his partition table, and will probably have to fix it via Gparted.

pvsage · 2012-10-21 18:30:49

joek wrote:

he typed sda1 instead of sdb1.

Looks like he made two mistakes here. wink (sda1 instead of sda.) If he did, that's a lucky break - he didn't overwrite the partition table. If he actually typed sda and overwrote the partition table, you'll want to try to recover any data from /home before you rebuild/replace the partition table. (I have no experience with the recovery part, but I know that if you need to create a new partition table - and there's a fair chance you will - you will lose all data in all partitions. See image above. neutral )

chameleon · 2012-10-21 18:57:35

@pvsage
'Permission to speak Sir!' lol
Yeh... the Great 'Dad's Army'
Showing my age now...but only one cast member still alive...
That was a masterpiece of comedy writing hmm

joek · 2012-10-21 20:26:31

pvsage: your first post is exactly what I told him to do. I haven't heard back, so I assume it worked.
And yes, he definitely managed to leave sda6 (/home) alone: he backed it up from inside #!'s live session before trusting my knowledge of partitioning. Probably wisely, seeing as I was describing the #! install sequence from memory...

shifat96 · 2012-11-02 01:21:06

I did a similar thing as your brother with Ubuntu once.
Good thing I had stored all my files on a second hard drive.

intoCB · 2012-11-03 11:27:39

Although UNetbootin won't create bootable Arch USBs, Live USB Installer on Windows will. A handy way to avoid running the dd gauntlet.

Failing that just keep saying "sdb" in your head as you type, rather than thinking about the "sda" you're trying to avoid typing.

joek · 2012-11-03 11:52:43

Windows LiveUSBInstaller is all well and good, provided that there is still a Windows machine in the house...
Anyway, latest news is that #! was reinstalled without loss of data on the /home partition, and raspian is successfully running on his RPi.

intoCB · 2012-11-03 12:08:30

True. But it might help someone else out. Not that I'm condoning the use of Windows in any way, shape or form.

On the plus side, your brother learned a very valuable lesson.

CrunchBang Linux

SEARCH

#1 2012-10-20 21:08:13

A cautionary tale...

#2 2012-10-20 21:14:19

Re: A cautionary tale...

#3 2012-10-20 21:24:53

Re: A cautionary tale...

#4 2012-10-21 09:31:55

Re: A cautionary tale...

#5 2012-10-21 17:09:22

Re: A cautionary tale...

#6 2012-10-21 17:30:34

Re: A cautionary tale...

#7 2012-10-21 18:30:49

Re: A cautionary tale...

#8 2012-10-21 18:57:35

Re: A cautionary tale...

#9 2012-10-21 20:26:31

Re: A cautionary tale...

#10 2012-11-02 01:21:06

Re: A cautionary tale...

#11 2012-11-03 11:27:39

Re: A cautionary tale...

#12 2012-11-03 11:52:43

Re: A cautionary tale...

#13 2012-11-03 12:08:30

Re: A cautionary tale...

Board footer