[K12OSN] Need advice on recovering from failed boot disk

[Rob Owens]

On Mon, Aug 15, 2011 at 08:28:19AM -0700, Carl Keil wrote:
> Thanks for helping me.
> 
> So, I tried the dd command, twice and then tried CloneZilla.  Twice.
> And the failing drive just kept throwing more and more errors.  Even
> with the "move on after bad sectors" (or whatever it's called
> exactly) switch thrown.  I think I need to give up on the miracle
> cure.  How was I ever going to trust the copied disk anyway?
> Wouldn't that just be latent problems (half garbled config files,
> etc.) waiting to happen?
> 
Did you try dd_rescue?

If you need to get certain files (config files maybe) off that drive,
give photorec a try.  It can find files even if the MBR is trashed.

> Anyway, now I'm looking for a little more philosophical advice.  I
> used to run k12ltsp on this server, but don't any more.  Now it's a
> web/samba/mythtv box for my home.  If it was you, and your old
> k12-centos 5.3 box ate it, but you had homes, web root, samba shares
> and your mythtv shows on separate drives, (and many complete backups
> via BackupPC) would you take the opportunity to upgrade to centos
> 5.6 or 6.0 or would you try to get back to 5.3 so you didn't break
> all that stuff via new versions of php, mysql, samba (prolly not an
> issue) and mythtv?   What's the smart move here?  Also, do you think

Have you compiled anything, or is everything from packages?  Your MythTV
installation may have required you to compile a video driver, lirc, or
possibly drivers for your capture card(s).  Don't forget about that
stuff when you plan your rebuild.

-Rob