Amahi server died

[Leagle]

Okay, this appears to be a significant problem - I was copying some data to my server this morning; some issues started popping up with my connection to the server (e.g. when I tried to access a folder on my server from another PC on my network it took a LONG time for the folder's contents to appear. Started taking excessively long - I.e. hanging. Rebooted my networked PC; then rebooted my Amahi server.

The latter step appears to have been a mistake. My server was hanging on a partially-filled "lemon" on the bootup screen. Tried rebooting; also hit esc - a bunch of error messages scrolled by, culminating with "boot has failed, sleeping forever." Previous messages included "mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock, on /dev/mapper/VolGroup-lv_root..."

I feel totally screwed right now. Typing this on my cell phone (no network!). Have I lost all my data? How do I recover from this?

[bigfoot65]

Sounds like your hard drive may have died. The best thing to do is use a Live CD for Fedora, Ubuntu, or your favorite distro to check things out. You should be able to gain access to your data and move it to another PC or drive.

[Leagle]

Dang! I was hoping that wouldn't be it. Was creating a live USB to repair/reinstall Fedora and hopefully Amahi (following the unsupported Live USB Amahi installation instructions) but was stymied when the Repair route said it couldn't find the appropriate drivers (I think for the ethernet card). It's a homebuilt box on a Gigabyte micro-ATX mobo, with no CD/DVD drive, so USB is how I have to go.

Grossly inconvenient timing. I'm creating a bootable USB drive from the Fedora page to see if I can get a glimpse at whether any of my data are still there.

This does raise a question in my mind (or rather refresh one that's been lurking there) about whether I should be relying on a single-drive server. Can't back it up to an online service like Carbonite, esp. given the amount of data on it. Need to think about whether I can do this on a DIY basis anymore or if I should just go and buy a commercial NAS or something.

[bigfoot65]

Well, there are backup options like Clonezilla and for online, there is Crashplan. Both are Amahi apps in testing.

I would recommend having at least 2 disks. I have the OS on one and my data on another (4 drives), using greyhole to keep extra copies.

There are many distros that work off of USB too. Ubuntu is one, as is Fedora. You can find them at http://www.pendrivelinux.com/.