B3 reinstall issue

[oblivion]

Hey!
I decided to reinstall my B3 today and followed the guide on the wiki.
Something must have gone wrong and it stops at boot with the LED purple (blue and red).

The B3 clearly starts the process since both the LED on the USB-drive with the install-stuff on in and the HDD's red LED having an 80s disco for a couple of minutes and the external LED is green.

I'm using the LAN-port for now but it sure does not lease an IP from the DHCP and it is not accessible on 192.168.10.1 (using this IP-range on my LAN just to be sure I can access it if it defaults to that IP, according to the manual).

My B3 came with a 3TB disk and it was ordered in 2012 and there were none in stock so it should support the 3TB disk, correct?
To make sure this was the case I also followed the guide on the wiki to update the boot loader.

At this point I need help getting it back to it's factory state since I cannot get hold of any logs (do not have the tools to open it up without the risk of damaging it).

Any help will be greatly appreciated.
Thanks a bunch!

P.S.
Had to remove offsite links to the wiki because phpBB thinks it looks too spammy for a new user, but you probably know which guides I am referring to.

[nobody]

if you change the USB disk into a rescue disk, can you boot into rescue mode?

[oblivion]

Thanks for the advice! I will try this tomorrow. Let you know.

[oblivion]

The rescue disk worked and I could browse around on the B3's disk.
It looks as if the reinstall worked, there were no traces of my changes, files or created users on the previous system. Even the log files are completely empty.

So I cannot make out what stops the B3 to boot properly.

Perhaps the disk is damaged for some reason, but it worked just fine before I did the initial reinstall.
I will try to get hold of the proper tools to open it and replace the disk unless someone has another idea.

Thanks for now!

[oblivion]

Actually, I found this now:

Code: Select all

# cat checkfs 
Log of fsck -C -R -A -y 
Sun Oct 21 19:00:10 2012

fsck from util-linux-ng 2.17.2
e2fsck 1.41.12 (17-May-2010)
fsck.ext3: No such file or directory while trying to open /dev/mapper/bubba-storage

The superblock could not be read or does not describe a correct ext2
filesystem.  If the device is valid and it really contains an ext2
filesystem (and not swap or ufs or something else), then the superblock
is corrupt, and you might try running e2fsck with an alternate superblock:
    e2fsck -b 8193 <device>

fsck died with exit status 8

Sun Oct 21 19:00:10 2012
----------------

[nobody]

Ah yes we've seen this error before, and i does not necessarily mean the volume is bad. I cant remember exactly what the end of that thread was, sopleas e have a look around this forum. Then the question is if you can reformat, or if you want to keep data that is currently on the disk. In the former case, just redo the installation. In the latter, you may need to figure out how to get to your data (most likely its still there), secure it on a usd drive or something, and then mess with e2fsck and friends to get the drive back to work, or just reformat.

In any case the behaviour you see is not necesarrily the result of a bad block. It happens sometimes after an unclean shutdown or a failed format.

[oblivion]

I'll try searching for this error in the forum.
I have already backed up everything of value, so I am ready for anything

Thanks again, I'll let you know what happens.

[nobody]

If you backed up id just reinstall with the reformat option turned on. Its really not worth spending time on this error.

[oblivion]

If you backed up id just reinstall with the reformat option turned on. Its really not worth spending time on this error.

That is what I have tried to do from the beginning, I do not need to save any data.
I just want the B3 back to the state it was when I unboxed it and the closest thing I could find was to follow the guide on the wiki.
Here is the cfg file I am using and I think that is how it looks when it is downloaded from Excito:

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#
# Default config for bubba installer
#

# Should we install at all?
# If set to 0. Installer will halt leaving a running "rescue system"
DO_INSTALL=1

# Instead of default installer execute
# /install/einstall.sh if available instead
#
#USE_EXTERNAL_SCRIPT=1

# Size of system partition (suffix important)
ROOT_SIZE=10GiB

# Size of swap partition (suffix important, need to be MiB or MB if below 1GiB)
SWAP_SIZE=1024MiB

# Should installer partition disk
# 1 - Yes
# 0 - No
#
# If no there has to be three partitions on disk: 
#	sda1 - System partition
#	sda2 - Data partition
#	sda3 - Swap partition

PARTITION=1

# Should installer format data partition
#
# 1 - Yes, do format
# 0 - No, leave intact
#
# If no, there has to be a sda2 data partition on the disk
# (System partition will always be reformatted on an install)
FORMAT=1

# Should installer try to set date and time on board
# 1 - Yes
# 0 - No
SETDATETIME=1

# Should data partition use LVM when partitioning and formatting
#
# 1 - Yes
# 0 - No
#
# Don't change this one if you aint really sure what you are doing!
#
USELVM=1

[oblivion]

Removed all the files from the B3's HDD
Downloaded the install files again and verified checksums
Threw everything over to the USB
Plugged it in to a Windows machine to remove the crap Mac OS X leaves behind
Plugged it in to B3
Pushed the power button
Inserted power cable
LED on front goes green
Released the power button
Letting it do it's thing for an hour
When I come back to check on it the purple LED stares me in the face

Booting into rescue mode and mounted the B3 HDD.
All directories and files I would expect finding on a Linux system is there so something went right.
But the superblock-error is still in the log.
The only two logs that are written to are "checkfs" and "checkroot" and "checkfs" is the one with the error.

I'm out of ideas of what the root cause might be and I really appreciate the helpful hints I have received so far.
Starting to suspect the HDD itself now, and unless someone has any idea I will try to replace it to see if I can get the box running again.

Thanks you nobody for the help so far!

[nobody]

well this is getting annoying.
I guess you ran the recommended command to reset the bad superblcok already. Did you also do a regular e2fchk on all volumes with repair turned on? Also, sometimes manually removing all partitions and replacing them with a single primary partition may help go get the installer to behave.

[oblivion]

Yes I tried to follow several suggestions on the internet to get rid of the problem without success.
I will try your suggestion to remove the partitions, thanks again nobody!

[oblivion]

So guess what! I have a blue LED shining pretty in my cabinet
I went all the way with

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dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda bs=1M

and let it run over night.

Then a reinstall using the USB, and now everything runs smoothly!
Thanks nobody for hanging with me.

[nobody]

Interesting, its like the installer recognises an original file system and skips a part of the formatting process. Good that it works now

[oblivion]

Yes, that is more or less proven in the attempt to remove everything but the partitions.
The installer should either verify the MBR and the partitions and not assume they are OK.
Or just wipe the MBR and do everything from scratch.