[mythtv-users] System melt down

Steve Smith st3v3.sm1th at gmail.com
Wed Jul 11 09:01:19 UTC 2007


Damian,

Yes the "fsck" issues are to do with the system not shutting down correctly
due to either
you switching it off, the PSU crapping out, power cut etc.
It's normal for fsck to complain like that. Windows does it too sometimes..
you must
have seen it do a disk check on boot up before? Same thing.

It does sound like one of your cards or motherboard has bitten the bullet
though. If your
PSU was faulty that could have caused it, or even the other way around!

Whatever is the case, you're on the right track with a step-by-step rebuild
to trace the culprit.

The nice thing about Linux is that even if you find you need to replace the
motherboard,
you won't need to start again building linux from scratch. With Windows if
you change the motherboard you are quite likely to have a system that won't
even boot (there are tricks to get round this but it's not guaranteed or
pretty!).

Cheers

Steve


On 11/07/07, Brian Wood <beww at beww.org> wrote:
>
> Damian wrote:
> > Brian Wood wrote:
> >> Damian wrote:
> >> <snip>
> >>> What would you suggest I do from here? Doesn't look good to me, but
> >>> maybe it's not all lost yet. Not quite sure what's going on, but
> >>> hopefully I've given enough information to either shed some light or
> get
> >>> a couple of suggestions.
> >> You should do exactly what it is telling you to do: run fsck manually.
> >>
> >> But of course you have to get to a working shell and minimal system to
> >> do that.
> >>
> >> You could possibly boot from one of the live CDs, or one of the
> >> pre-packaged rescue CDs like the "Ultimate Boot CD":
> >>
> >> http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/
> >>
> >> (site seems down right now though)
> >>
> >> Unfortunately such preparations for a situation like this require
> either
> >> another working machine or having made such a disk ahead of time.
> >>
> >> Your MoBo's POST test is not happy, as indicated by the beep code. Most
> >> MoBos have a list someplace (docs or online support) of precisely what
> >> each beep code means.
> >>
> >> I'm guessing you have a failed hard drive, can you get to the BIOS
> setup
> >> screen, and does it show the hard drive(s) correctly?
> >>
> >> If you can get fsck to run manually from a shell, I'd use the -y
> option,
> >> or you will be typing "y" a LOT.
> >>
> >> Good Luck.
> >>
> >> BEWW
> >
> > Thanks Brian,
> >
> > I have a couple of working windows machines here so I'm downloading the
> > UltimateBootCD now.
> >
> > Excuse my ignorance, but should I simply run:
> > fsck -y
> > when I get to a command prompt?
>
> Not quite, you have to run fsck -y (filesystem to check)
>
> In a simple case it would be fsck -y /dev/hda1
>
> >
> >  From the motherboard beep codes that I can find, the one I'm getting
> > indicates a problem with the graphics card. That seems to not be the
> > case though as switching graphics cards produces the same problem, but
> > removing other cards seems to fix it.
> >
> > I've started to have an idea about what's happened ..
> > Maybe something random failed (sound card?) which caused the computer to
> > behave oddly, then the hard drive died because a file was copying over
> > the net when I shut the computer down.
>
> As BW said, that would trash a file, not cause a hard drive hardware
> failure.
>
> Only on old Star Trek episodes does giving a computer bad instructions
> cause hardware destruction.
>
> >
> > I'll really have lost faith in Linux if that's what has happened. I lost
> > a hard drive to Linux a few months ago due to a power cut, and having
> > the trouble now potentially because of shutting down while a file was
> > copying. I know neither of those two things are great, but I've had the
> > same countless times on windows machines and never had such dire
> > consequences.
>
> Please do not blame this on Linux, it is not the problem.
>
> I'm really beginning to think you have a PS problem, as BW suggested as
> well. The MoBo is also possible but I'd be astounded if this does not
> turn out to be a hardware problem.
>
> BEWW
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