How do I recover from a Linux CentOS 4.6 Operating System Crash

Question

Our x86 Linux server running CentOS4.6 has crashed. The machine boots only to the Grub prompt. We have tried using the "rescue mode" to recover the System, but it hasn't worked.

How can we fix this problem, so that the machine boots normally?

How can we fix this problem to the point were we can recover our files from the server

Our Linux Server Configuration:

Dell PowerEdge 1950 Intel Xeon 2 HDD (146GB each) 4GB RAM Hardware and Software raid setup CentOS 4.6

We used Sysrecord to boot the computer: the following are the output of fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 293.3 GB, 292326211584
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 35539 Cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000080

Device         Boot      Start      End       Blocks           Id     System
/dev/sda1    *           1            13        104391         83    Linux
/dev/sda2                 14          17769   142625070  8e    Linux LVM

Answer 1

If you need some files, I would boot with a livecd and see if you can mount the partition read-only.

If you can't mount it, I would try to create a disk-image using of the device using dd onto something like an external drive to work from. That way when you journey into the land of file system forensics, you can backup that image, and won't do any more damage.

Answer 2

I am not certain if this is a hardware or software issue, you haven't given us any errors to look at, see whats happening inside /var/log/messages maybe that should shed some light on why the system crashed. However looking at your question, it seems you are only interested in recovering files, in that case Kyles' suggestion should work.