Boot with bad superblock in root fs

[Jeff Vian]

On Sun, 2006-08-27 at 20:49 -0500, Jay Cliburn wrote:
> Charles Curley wrote:
> > On Sun, Aug 27, 2006 at 07:57:19PM -0500, Jay Cliburn wrote:
> >> Is it possible to boot a Linux system that has suffered unfixable 
> >> primary superblock corruption in the root filesystem (ext2)?  I know the 
> >> mount command can be supplied an alternate superblock with the sb 
> >> option, but AFAIK, the earliest this can be done is by setting the 
> >> option for the failing partition in /etc/fstab.  But of course, root 
> >> must already be mounted for that to apply.
> >>
> >> Is there any Way to specify an alternate superblock to initrd to mount 
> >> the root filesystem?
> > 
> > Can you boot to a live CD, fix the errant partition, and then reboot?
> > Finnix should do you.
> 
> Actually, the problem isn't with my system, but with that of an 
> acquaintance, and no, the primary superblock refuses to be fixed with 
> e2fsck -b executed from Ubuntu LiveCD.
> 

Maybe you can use one of the alternate superblocks when running e2fsck
on that filesystem.  After all, that is why they are there.