[GTALUG] Cannot open rescue disk

Ken Heard kenslists at teksavvy.com
Wed Jul 11 11:49:05 EDT 2018


On 2018-07-09 12:45, Giles Orr wrote:

> This link: https://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch000474.htm suggests the
> problem is lower level than I thought (BIOS rather than OS, which may
> negate what I've written below).  You could take a look and see if their
> suggestions help.  Doesn't look like a fun problem to tackle, sorry.  As
> they suggest, start reseating or better, disconnecting internal components
> one at a time in the hope the problem goes away on one of them.

This link was useful to me because it explains the problem better than I 
did in my original post.  In addition, I see why I could not find it 
using a google search.  I searched using the same words as the title of 
this thread plus 'linux'.  If I had used as my search text 'Verifying 
DMI Pool Data ...' I would have found the link.  It shows that when 
using search engines you have to choose the right search words -- often 
difficult to do.

> I use Knoppix ( http://www.knopper.net/knoppix-mirrors/index-en.html )
> almost exclusively for rescue - I would give it a try.  I'm inclined to
> suspect a hardware problem, and if you get the same error after burning
> Knoppix to a USB stick and booting, that would be ... well, a partial
> confirmation.  Only partial because Knoppix is still, at its core (I think
> ...), Debian.

So I downloaded Knoppix 8.2, burned it to a DVD.  It did indeed boot the 
offending computer.  I was able to access my /home directory.

I then tried again to boot the computer from the hard drives which have 
Jessie installed.  (There are two hard drives which form a RAID1 
device.) This time the boot completed, no more 99s!

During subsequent bootings from these drives however, using both the 
installed Jessie and the Knoppix, after the message 'Verifying DMI Pool 
Data ...' was displayed it was a long time before they were detected. 
So it is possible that those drives, or perhaps one of them, are close 
to failing.  They have been in use since 2011.  Testing them is 
consequently next on my troubleshooting my agenda.

Thanks for the info.

Regards,

Ken


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