Ubuntu pain :( help avoid a spanking

[shephga]

Hi,

Setup is as follows, HP Microserver, with Ubuntu Server 12.04 installed on the original hard drive (bay0)supplied with the server. I then added a 74GB WD Raptor (bay1) on which I put some media files and some documents scan images (<<<<thats the bit thats going to hurt me). Anyhow I attempt to upgrade 12.04 to 12.10 and it fails, cant seem to get out using recovery or backout from upgrade due to a space issue for the required files to either download or decompress to continue the upgrade. I then add another drive inserting it into bay0, the original drive in bay0 to bay1 and the raptor drive with my scans on to bay2. I then install Ubuntu 12.10 desktop on to the new drive, I don't believe the drives in bays1 and bays2 were inserted at the time of installation as to avoid any risk of losing my data. After the install I've fully inserted the drives, they're viewable by the new version of Ubuntu but no data is viewable on either drive, only lost and found folders.

Am I ****ed ?

If not any tips on how to avoid a beating from the wife about losing the scans of the documents which I said would be safer on the server (was what I justified the purchase of the server with).

Yes I should've backed it up, but theres always something more important to do at the time (yeah I know backing up is something that should've been done at the time).

Yes I'm owned by my wife.

Please help.

Thanks

 

[memyselfandi]

What's the outputs of:

fdisk -l

(that's a lower case L)

and:

df -k

?

When you have moved the disks around the system is probably picking them up as different devices so they may not have been mounted as you expect (or at all). Hence your data may still be there but you just can't see it at the moment.

 

[shephga]

Thanks for helping, nothing is returned back from fdisk -l , as shown below

"
greg@greg-ProLiant-MicroServer:~$ fdisk
Usage:
fdisk [options] <disk> change partition table
fdisk [options] -l <disk> list partition table(s)
fdisk -s <partition> give partition size(s) in blocks

Options:
-b <size> sector size (512, 1024, 2048 or 4096)
-c[=<mode>] compatible mode: 'dos' or 'nondos' (default)
-h print this help text
-u[=<unit>] display units: 'cylinders' or 'sectors' (default)
-v print program version
-C <number> specify the number of cylinders
-H <number> specify the number of heads
-S <number> specify the number of sectors per track

greg@greg-ProLiant-MicroServer:~$ fdisk -l
"

Output from df -k is as follows

"
greg@greg-ProLiant-MicroServer:~$ df -k
Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda1 184037468 3650012 171038848 3% /
udev 4135840 4 4135836 1% /dev
tmpfs 1657432 772 1656660 1% /run
none 5120 0 5120 0% /run/lock
none 4143572 76 4143496 1% /run/shm
none 102400 20 102380 1% /run/user
"

Using the Ubuntu home folder GUI the two drives are show as devices.

Cheers again.

 

[memyselfandi]

Ah, on CentOS that fdisk would have listed all partitions on all disks ... From the Ubuntu documentation if you run

sudo lshw -C disk

That should return a stanza on each disk. From your df we know your boot drive is /dev/sda so see what other devices are listed in the other stanzas. You should then be able to run fdisk -l against the devices (with sudo)

What we're trying to do is see what partitions the system thinks there are on your data disks. With that information you can manually mount them at the command line and have a look to see if there is any actual content which is being hidden due to lack of user permissions through the GUI

As it's Ubuntu I'm referring to
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/InstallingANewHardDrive

BUT if you look at that page DO NOT do anything from under the partitioning sections as you will lose the data. Just look at determine drive Info, create mount point and manually mount. Sda# partitions are your boot drive so things like sdb1, sdc1, or if the other disks are just showing as whole disks with no "1" partition then sdb and sdc. You may well be able to guess which one it is by looking at the sizes from fdisk -l on the drives.

 

[shephga]

Attempted to mount the drives, it let me mount and see the contents of the 250GB WD partition #1

WD250
=====
Model: ATA VB0250EAVER (scsi)
Disk /dev/sdb: 250GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: msdos

Number Start End Size Type File system Flags
1 1049kB 256MB 255MB primary ext2 boot
2 257MB 250GB 250GB extended
5 257MB 250GB 250GB logical lvm

Raptor
=====
Model: ATA WDC WD740GD-00FL (scsi)
Disk /dev/sdc: 74.4GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: msdos

Number Start End Size Type File system Flags
1 1049kB 74.4GB 74.4GB primary ext3

--------------------------------------------------------------

The data I need to get to is either on partitions 2 on WD250 or partition1 on Raptor. It lets me mount the raptor drive using
'sudo mount /dev/sdc1 /media/raptor'

but no contents are listed

Attempts to mount partition 2 of WD250 just keep moaning about needing to specify the filesystem type.

Thanks again, any further advice appreciated.

 

[memyselfandi]

Ok the WD250 partition 2 is an extended volume which just contains partition 5 which is a lvm partition (which complicates a few things). (In case I forget you'll probably need sudo with the following)

Have you currently got any LVM volume groups listed?
vgs

If that comes back with command not found then is the lvm2 package installed in your current OS, if not then you'll probably need it:
apt-get install lvm2

Scan for volume groups:
vgscan

If it finds a volume group against /dev/sdb5 then activate it (we'll assume it is called VolGroup00):
vgchange -a y VolGroup00

List the logical volumes within VolGroup00:
lvs

There will probably be multiple logical volumes under there including the old root partition and swap partition (and any other filesystems created other than boot).

Now the logical volumes in VolGroup00 can be mounted in the same way as per what was done with the physical partitions earlier; instead of /dev/sdc1 you'd use /dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00

edit: Have you tried listing the mount filesystem on the Raptor with sudo incase your user doesn't have read access to see the files. e.g.
sudo ls -l /media/raptor/*

 

[shephga]

Raptors not showing anything when mounted with sudo ls -l /media/mounted

I'm now seeing the contents of WD250, it's possible that the files I'm looking for are on there, I just need to spend more time on it. Thank you so much for your help, I'll provide an update if I find the files or not.

Thanks

Greg