[TriLUG] Locked Out Linux box (Update)

[Paul Boyle via TriLUG]

To give all an update:

My laptop is working again. I gave my computer to one of the tech's in
my department's electronic shop. He drained the battery and reset the
BIOS.  He also gave me the hard drive.  I was able to back up
my /home/boyle user account to an external drive.

I used:

find . -depth -print0 | cpio --null -pmvd <external storage device>

I had to wipe my disk clean (gdisk, deleted all the partitions).  I
reinstalled OpenSuSE LEAP 42.2. One change I made from my previous
installation ( / partition used btrfs and /home used xfs):  I
changed the install so that / uses an xfs filesystem as does /home.  

I restored /home/boyle from my back up using the same command as above
(changing the current and target directories as appropriate.

One curious result (I know this isn't a rigourous test, but my backup
copy of my /home/boyle directory was 26 GB on the external drive (and
that's what it was on the laptop's hard drive before the crash.  I
after I restored to the newly formatted filesystem, /home/boyle was
only 25GB.  Does this indicate data loss, or could it somehow be due to
a more efficient packing on the disk when it was restored?

Thanks for any guidance.

Paul

On Fri, 13 Oct 2017 12:22:38 -0400
Mauricio Tavares <raubvogel at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Fri, Oct 13, 2017 at 11:51 AM, Paul Boyle via TriLUG
> <trilug at trilug.org> wrote:
> > Here is an update on my sad laptop's situation:
> > I gave the laptop to one of the electronics technicians in my
> > department.  He was able to reboot the computer with the hard drive
> > removed, but booting up failed with the hard drive in.  I need to
> > talk to him to see what the error message was.
> >
> > This is sounding like something in my /boot filesystem got hammered.
> > Sigh.
> >
>       If it boots fine,s pecially when you slap a new HD in it, the
> problem is somewhere in your HD, like some kind of corruption, virus,
> or aliens.
> 
> > Paul
> >
> > On Thu, 12 Oct 2017 01:54:03 +0000
> > Paul Boyle via TriLUG <trilug at trilug.org> wrote:
> >
> >> Hi,
> >>
> >> I have a big problem:  I'm running OpenSuSE LEAP 42.2 on an Acer
> >> Aspire E17 x86_64 (Core i5 machine).  My machine froze (no mouse,
> >> unresponsive keyboard (couldn't switch to another VT)).  So, I did
> >> what most people would do:  I hit the power button to reboot. I got
> >> prompted with question that was something like this:  "Do you agree
> >> to use only Linux (or was it Opensuse?) certified boot loaders? (or
> >> something like that).  The default answer was "No".  So I hit "No".
> >> Then I got a brief message saying the machine is locked out, and
> >> the machine powered off.
> >>
> >> Now, the machine will not even come up with a BIOS set up
> >> message.  I power it on, and the power light goes on, and then
> >> nothing.  I opened the DVD drive to try to boot from the
> >> installation media.  No dice there either.  Basically, I've
> >> bricked my laptop, which is really a bad thing for me.
> >>
> >> How can I rescue my laptop?  Will taking out and reinstalling the
> >> battery pack and/or the CMOS or BIOS battery clear this lock out?
> >>
> >> Any help would be appreciated.
> >>
> >> Thanks,
> >>
> >> Paul
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > Paul D. Boyle, Ph. D.
> > Manager, X-ray Facility
> > Department of Chemistry
> > Western University
> > London, ON N6A 5B7
> > Canada
> > GPG Fingerprint: 8ECE 516D 9046 FE83 4A46  7E8E D720 555D 8CC3 EC6B
> >
> > --
> > This message was sent to: raubvogel at gmail.com <raubvogel at gmail.com>
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-- 
Paul D. Boyle, Ph. D.
Manager, X-ray Facility
Department of Chemistry
Western University
London, ON N6A 5B7
Canada
GPG Fingerprint: 8ECE 516D 9046 FE83 4A46  7E8E D720 555D 8CC3 EC6B
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