• Recent
    • Unsolved
    • Tags
    • Popular
    • Users
    • Groups
    • Search
    • Register
    • Login

    Storms, corrupted MBR, save the images?

    Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved
    General Problems
    5
    20
    4.0k
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as topic
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with topic management privileges can see it.
    • M
      Mastriani
      last edited by Mastriani

      Short run: in one of the states hammered over the weekend. Local substation must have superspiked/surged; Win DC, Fog, client machines are all showing corrupted/damaged/lost mbr, none fixable so far. Tried everything suggested Linux/Ubuntu for mbr fix/recovery, nothing but errors and no fix found.

      So, if I pull the drive from the Fog server, drop it in a USB enclosure, is it possible to retrieve the images and import to the server with a fresh install? Inclusive of image definition files?

      Or, am I clueless and it cannot be done?

      Q 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • Q
        Quazz Moderator @Mastriani
        last edited by Quazz

        @Mastriani Assuming you can access the data (and the data isn’t damaged/corrupted), it is theoretically possible to get the entire database and the images and put them on a different disk.

        M 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
        • Tom ElliottT
          Tom Elliott
          last edited by

          If the MBR’s are “broke” in such a manner, chances are there’s sectors damaged as well.

          You can try to dd-recover the drives to see if you can at least get the data.

          Theoretically it’s possible, but if so many systems lost the drive, chances are likely this is far more reaching than recovery is going to be able to help with.

          What concerns me, however, is how so many machines ended up with the same problem. The client machines, I can understand. The “Servers” worry me. Infrastructure should always be separated, grounded, and have DR available as required. Of course Storms aren’t anything one can predict, but I’ve not heard of many server’s being lost during storms. Power outages are understandable, but a direct hit from lighting… With no grounding… No surge protection… (Scary).

          Please help us build the FOG community with everyone involved. It's not just about coding - way more we need people to test things, update documentation and most importantly work on uniting the community of people enjoying and working on FOG! Get in contact with me (chat bubble in the top right corner) if you want to join in.

          Web GUI issue? Please check apache error (debian/ubuntu: /var/log/apache2/error.log, centos/fedora/rhel: /var/log/httpd/error_log) and php-fpm log (/var/log/php*-fpm.log)

          Please support FOG if you like it: https://wiki.fogproject.org/wiki/index.php/Support_FOG

          M 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
          • george1421G
            george1421 Moderator
            last edited by

            Just be aware the computer that you are using to retrieve the files from must be a linux computer. Windows doesn’t understand ext4 disk format.

            Please help us build the FOG community with everyone involved. It's not just about coding - way more we need people to test things, update documentation and most importantly work on uniting the community of people enjoying and working on FOG!

            M 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
            • M
              Mastriani @Tom Elliott
              last edited by

              @Tom-Elliott Thank you Mr. Elliott, and things to understand.

              In a school district in a rural, morbidly economically depressed county.

              Local electric cooperative is “good ole boy” style, and having had some investigation done, our “general” electrical delivery is off standard by 5 - 12% as a rule of operation, (ie. on 110 circuit, actually voltage can range 89 - 105 at any time tested). I definitely agree, it is a “shouldn’t ever happen” scenario, but dirty electric delivery shouldn’t ever happen either.

              I have done what I can do with the available UPS and as much separation between mission critical devices and standard use, but there are quite simply too many things outside my domain and “above my pay grade”.

              If I can recover the data, is there a best practices methodology you suggest?

              Tom ElliottT 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • M
                Mastriani @george1421
                last edited by

                @george1421 Thank you sir, yes I understand. It would be from a new drive with a new install of Ubuntu server.

                I am looking for a best practices methodology to ensure my activities do not add to possibility of further corruption/damage.

                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • Tom ElliottT
                  Tom Elliott @Mastriani
                  last edited by

                  @Mastriani Well I totally understand the limitations of economic status. I’m just saying it’s definitely scary (for reasons you are all too easily aware of now). As far as recovering, you can certainly try getting the data, though your best bet would be to use dd-rescue I think as it’s not reliant on knowing the partition layout. dd recovery would also work, but you have to write the information directly to opt out of “drop errors” kind of thing where dd-rescue does this relatively seamlessly.

                  Understand that to get your backup it will take a long time.

                  I’ve had to do dd recovery on a 500gb drive and it was about 12 hours of waiting for the information to be done copying. After that, I was able to put it on another drive and all seemed to be well.

                  Please help us build the FOG community with everyone involved. It's not just about coding - way more we need people to test things, update documentation and most importantly work on uniting the community of people enjoying and working on FOG! Get in contact with me (chat bubble in the top right corner) if you want to join in.

                  Web GUI issue? Please check apache error (debian/ubuntu: /var/log/apache2/error.log, centos/fedora/rhel: /var/log/httpd/error_log) and php-fpm log (/var/log/php*-fpm.log)

                  Please support FOG if you like it: https://wiki.fogproject.org/wiki/index.php/Support_FOG

                  M 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                  • M
                    Mastriani @Quazz
                    last edited by

                    @Quazz Thank you, currently running diagnostics for RAM/RAID consistency, so I am thinking towards the next step.

                    Obviously, if the data isn’t retrievable, it’s an all new install of everything and level 0 start over. Hope that isn’t the outcome, so trying to plan for a better scenario.

                    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                    • M
                      Mastriani @Tom Elliott
                      last edited by

                      @Tom-Elliott Thank you Mr. Elliott, I am not familiar with the operation of dd-rescue? Something you can link me to perhaps?

                      Tom ElliottT george1421G 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 0
                      • Tom ElliottT
                        Tom Elliott @Mastriani
                        last edited by

                        @Mastriani https://www.gnu.org/software/ddrescue/

                        Please help us build the FOG community with everyone involved. It's not just about coding - way more we need people to test things, update documentation and most importantly work on uniting the community of people enjoying and working on FOG! Get in contact with me (chat bubble in the top right corner) if you want to join in.

                        Web GUI issue? Please check apache error (debian/ubuntu: /var/log/apache2/error.log, centos/fedora/rhel: /var/log/httpd/error_log) and php-fpm log (/var/log/php*-fpm.log)

                        Please support FOG if you like it: https://wiki.fogproject.org/wiki/index.php/Support_FOG

                        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                        • Tom ElliottT
                          Tom Elliott
                          last edited by

                          I think we need clear information on what you’ve tried, how you determined what’s happening, and a general overview of how things were setup though.

                          Running DD on individual disks that were in a RAID won’t be very useful.

                          Please help us build the FOG community with everyone involved. It's not just about coding - way more we need people to test things, update documentation and most importantly work on uniting the community of people enjoying and working on FOG! Get in contact with me (chat bubble in the top right corner) if you want to join in.

                          Web GUI issue? Please check apache error (debian/ubuntu: /var/log/apache2/error.log, centos/fedora/rhel: /var/log/httpd/error_log) and php-fpm log (/var/log/php*-fpm.log)

                          Please support FOG if you like it: https://wiki.fogproject.org/wiki/index.php/Support_FOG

                          M 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                          • Joseph HalesJ
                            Joseph Hales Testers
                            last edited by

                            I try and keep a USB drive backup of the images offline as well as the configuration save to permit an easy rebuild from scratch if necessary. Most users update images rarely enough that this is not a huge burden.

                            RTFM

                            M 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                            • M
                              Mastriani @Tom Elliott
                              last edited by

                              @Tom-Elliott

                              1. Came in, restarted UPS, checked status, gave it 2 hours to restore levels, in case of further outage. We still have crews working in county and 4 surrounding, likely will have more down.

                              2. Started Win DC, locked in boot options reboot cycle. Started hardware diagnostics, letting it go.

                              3. Started Ubuntu/Fog server, locked at lost/corrupted mbr message. Attempted 1 restart in case of anomalous behavior. Same outcome.

                              4. Ran the Ubuntu live CD, could not even mount sda1, (•sudo mount /dev/sda1 /mnt). Tried Boot-Repair, same outcome. “Assumed” it was pointless to go for more utilities/attempts … ?

                              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                              • george1421G
                                george1421 Moderator @Mastriani
                                last edited by george1421

                                @Mastriani once you get your servers back online, look at Veeam Endpoint Backup (free) to make a DR image of your physical servers, both windows and linux. If you have it installed and you have your DR backup you can bring back the server by booting off the Veeam DR disk and then connect to your backup repository (files).

                                ref: https://www.veeam.com/windows-endpoint-server-backup-free.html

                                Please help us build the FOG community with everyone involved. It's not just about coding - way more we need people to test things, update documentation and most importantly work on uniting the community of people enjoying and working on FOG!

                                M 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                                • Tom ElliottT
                                  Tom Elliott
                                  last edited by

                                  Well the “MBR” data is the partition layout, so if this is lost or corrupt, linux has no idea where /dev/sda1 is.

                                  You could try a utility with testdisk that should be able to help find and recover the mbr information potentially.

                                  Please help us build the FOG community with everyone involved. It's not just about coding - way more we need people to test things, update documentation and most importantly work on uniting the community of people enjoying and working on FOG! Get in contact with me (chat bubble in the top right corner) if you want to join in.

                                  Web GUI issue? Please check apache error (debian/ubuntu: /var/log/apache2/error.log, centos/fedora/rhel: /var/log/httpd/error_log) and php-fpm log (/var/log/php*-fpm.log)

                                  Please support FOG if you like it: https://wiki.fogproject.org/wiki/index.php/Support_FOG

                                  M 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                                  • M
                                    Mastriani @george1421
                                    last edited by

                                    @george1421 That is massively appreciated, especially considering my lack of authority to control the environments for my equipment. Thank you very much sir, that is very much needed.

                                    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                    • Tom ElliottT
                                      Tom Elliott
                                      last edited by

                                      http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk

                                      Please help us build the FOG community with everyone involved. It's not just about coding - way more we need people to test things, update documentation and most importantly work on uniting the community of people enjoying and working on FOG! Get in contact with me (chat bubble in the top right corner) if you want to join in.

                                      Web GUI issue? Please check apache error (debian/ubuntu: /var/log/apache2/error.log, centos/fedora/rhel: /var/log/httpd/error_log) and php-fpm log (/var/log/php*-fpm.log)

                                      Please support FOG if you like it: https://wiki.fogproject.org/wiki/index.php/Support_FOG

                                      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                      • M
                                        Mastriani @Tom Elliott
                                        last edited by

                                        @Tom-Elliott Yes sir, I was just looking at that, having trouble understanding how it is utilized, unless it is a boot CD/DVD?

                                        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                        • Tom ElliottT
                                          Tom Elliott
                                          last edited by

                                          Maybe here:
                                          http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk_Livecd

                                          Please help us build the FOG community with everyone involved. It's not just about coding - way more we need people to test things, update documentation and most importantly work on uniting the community of people enjoying and working on FOG! Get in contact with me (chat bubble in the top right corner) if you want to join in.

                                          Web GUI issue? Please check apache error (debian/ubuntu: /var/log/apache2/error.log, centos/fedora/rhel: /var/log/httpd/error_log) and php-fpm log (/var/log/php*-fpm.log)

                                          Please support FOG if you like it: https://wiki.fogproject.org/wiki/index.php/Support_FOG

                                          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                          • M
                                            Mastriani @Joseph Hales
                                            last edited by

                                            @Joseph-Hales Thank you sir, yes, it would appear that may be a best practice that has to be instated. Even though I regularly update images, at no more than 2 month cycle, it shouldn’t add much extra work to the process in total.

                                            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                            • 1 / 1
                                            • First post
                                              Last post

                                            162

                                            Online

                                            12.0k

                                            Users

                                            17.3k

                                            Topics

                                            155.2k

                                            Posts
                                            Copyright © 2012-2024 FOG Project