fixing a broken debian?


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Hello!

 

first of all I am not great at linux so please speak slowly... xD .... I am at work and I have been tasked with fixing a broken server, the OS appears to not load and just turns off I am not able to get into recovery mode either.... I was going to use a live CD but honestly I have no clue what to do, how can I repair the OS using a live cd? any help (I have googled this but all I can find is how to fix a windows computer using ubuntu.... -_- ) 

 

 

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A live cd can help you determine if it's an OS or a hardware issue, which may be a good idea.

I'm guessing the bios is fully available to allow you to boot from a cd or usb stick? If the live cd won't load/crashes etc, then you likely have a hardware issue. I'm focusing on that because you said "It turns off", but I don't know if you mean the machine shuts down? Or just the OS stops trying to load?

This is a few years old, but may still be useable, or at least offer place to start.

http://hswong3i.net/blog/hswong3i/how-fix-your-debian-file-system-fsck

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how can I repair the OS using a live cd? any help (I have googled this but all I can find is how to fix a windows computer using ubuntu.... -_- )

By chrooting. The same way you'd fix a distro's grub setup or when something like Windows overwrites the MBR. Here's an example of how I'd normally reinstall my grub to the mbr from a live cd:

$ mount /dev/sda1 /mnt
$ mount -t proc none /mnt/proc
$ mount -o rbind /dev /mnt/dev
$ mount -o bind /sys /mnt/sys
$ mount -o bind /tmp /mnt/tmp
$ chroot /mnt /bin/bash
$ grub-install /dev/sda
$ reboot
Now strictly speaking you don't necessarily have to map all those live cd devices to your chrooted environment, but it's a good idea to know them anyway. I learnt chrooting through a baptism of fire when I began installing Gentoo (years ago). There's really no better way to learn how Linux is put together than doing a stage 1 Gentoo install from scratch.

Once you've chrooted, you have a working environment inside your installed distro and can fix most problems that you might come up against. That being said, it's important to know the cause of the problem in the first place. If it's just a simple configuration file fix, then you can simply mount the distro (mount /dev/sda1 /mnt) and edit it in vim/nano without needing to chroot.

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debian based distros are broken to begin with since 2010.. sorry but you should go for the red hat if you wanna be stylin and keep sense in the Linux world.

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debian based distros are broken to begin with since 2010.. sorry but you should go for the red hat if you wanna be stylin and keep sense in the Linux world.

 

your doing something wrong then

 

i have been using debian for years and only time i have managed to break it is through being stupid

 

Debian is one of the most relaiable distros i have used

 

one if my servers is debian and has an uptime now of 200+ Days

 

 

 

back on topic

 

 

you say you turn it on and it turns back off

 

even if a distro cant load it should throw errors at you :)

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  • 2 weeks later...

your doing something wrong then

 

i have been using debian for years and only time i have managed to break it is through being stupid

 

Debian is one of the most relaiable distros i have used

 

one if my servers is debian and has an uptime now of 200+ Days

 

 

 

back on topic

 

 

you say you turn it on and it turns back off

 

even if a distro cant load it should throw errors at you :)

 

 

just one of the RAM modules died D: 4gbs of ram were lost that day :( its odd though that i made it passed the bios and everything.. so yea apprently it was a hardware issue haha been about 2 weeks not and its been all good (took me long to get back to this forum post because I have been working for the past 12 days with very little rest)

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debian based distros are broken to begin with since 2010.. sorry but you should go for the red hat if you wanna be stylin and keep sense in the Linux world.

Debian is a very stable distro actually. Red hat, on the other hand, is garbage, you need to pay to get package updates. The only good thing about red hat is they provide support, so if you've got no clue about a RHEL setup or problem, they'll help you.

 

just one of the RAM modules died D: 4gbs of ram were lost that day :( its odd though that i made it passed the bios and everything.. so yea apprently it was a hardware issue haha been about 2 weeks not and its been all good (took me long to get back to this forum post because I have been working for the past 12 days with very little rest)

BIOS does a self-check on RAM when it boots up, well, it used to in the 90s, generally PCs will skip memory tests at bootup now because they add extra delay to the boot process. Not to mention that all a memory test does is try writing 0s or 1s to all memory to see if it works, there are many different ways memory bits can fail and this is not a true memory test.

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