[TriLUG] Locked Out Linux box (Denouement)

Mon Oct 23 10:41:09 EDT 2017

Here is the denouement to my saga:

To get my laptop back to some reasonable functionality, I ditched
OpenSuSE LEAP 42.2, wiped the disk clean, and installed CENTOS 7.  I
restored my back up and things mostly seem to work (I have to update
firefox bookmarks and other piddily tasks).

It's sort of sad, I've been a SuSE user since SuSE 7.x series (I think
it was 7.3, not sure). I've always been pretty happy with that
distribution. It was rock solid stable. They were early supporters of
hardware accelerated OpenGL (which is useful for my work). The
installer is great (much better than anaconda, imho), and the yast2
sysadmin tool is pretty good too. I'll miss those. OpenSuSE was great
up until about version 12.2 or 12.3 when systemd was introduced.
Versions 13.1 and 13.2 were a slight improvement, but I began to feel
more and more that I wasn't in charge of the computer (even as root).
For example, doing a simple 'ls -ltr' (as root) on a user's home
directory would "stall" for over 90 seconds sometime.

In any case, adios, OpenSuSE.  Hello, CENTOS 7.

Thanks to everyone who offered advice.

Paul

On Fri, 20 Oct 2017 16:08:02 -0400
Paul Boyle via TriLUG <trilug at trilug.org> wrote:

> 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> To unsubscribe, send a blank message to
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> > > https://www.trilug.org/mailman/options/trilug/raubvogel%40gmail.com
> > > Welcome to TriLUG: http://trilug.org/welcome
> 
> 
> 

-- 
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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