How to solve this problem?

Changwan

New Member
Joined
Oct 24, 2020
Messages
5
Reaction score
1
Credits
58
I am stuck in the problem, maybe in the boot sector.

I use VMware Workstation 15 Player and Centos 8.0.

One of my client virtual computers has a problem that I cannot boot!

This first screenshot can show its situation that I cannot boot (attachment: lsblk).

I installed another virtual computer without any problem.

This second screenshot can show normal situation that I can boot (attachment: normal client_lsblk).

You can see "/boot" on the MOUNTPOINT column in the second one.

I would like to fix the virtual computer in the first screenshot.

How can I do that?
 

Attachments

  • lsblk.jpg
    lsblk.jpg
    54.5 KB · Views: 189
  • normal client_lsblk.jpg
    normal client_lsblk.jpg
    69.7 KB · Views: 248


Looking at your /dev/sda it doesn't seem to have any mount points and loop devices are for making files accessible as block devices so they aren't part of your installation. So I would think something didn't go quite right during the installation, what distribution did you install?
 
Thank you for your concern and question! The problem in the first screen shot occurred while expanding the hard disk. I did something wrong. But, I don't know how to fix this. I installed with CentOS 8.2.2004.
 
There doesn't seem to be a /(root) partition mounted either which I would expect on one of your sda partitions. Describe what you did the expand your hard disk on that machine?
 
For starters, I expanded disk capacity by using GUI of the VMware workstaion 15 Player (attachment_1). You know, even though we expand the capacity in the GUI, we need several command lines to really reflect the change in my virtual computer. Unfortunately, I cannot clearly remember what I did, but following some guide from a Korean blog (attachment_2), I used:

fdisk /dev/sda

After that, I deleted certain partition--I forgot which part I selected.

I think I probably deleted boot disk in my virtual computer as I cannot boot now. The blogger also mentions I should be cautious not to delete the boot disk.

For more information, a week ago I already posted the same problem in another thread (https://linux.org/threads/help-me-out-you-don-t-have-any-linux-partitions.31244/) without any reply. I hope this would be helpful with you to give me any suggestions.

Sincerely,
Changwan
 

Attachments

  • Attachment_1.jpg
    Attachment_1.jpg
    167.6 KB · Views: 154
  • Attachment_2.jpg
    Attachment_2.jpg
    288.3 KB · Views: 165
First of all please don't double post. @wizardfromoz can you merge the original post into this one and add the attachments from that topic as well. Second of all looking at your original post you were using a default centos disk setup which was using LVM, so the way you were trying to increase your volume size was not necessary and could have be easily increased without having to do what you were doing.

Since you don't remember what you did my guess is that you increased the disk in vmware, then deleted the partition containing LVM setup, then recreated(to increase the size) the partition with wrong first and last cylinder boundaries, and then applying/writing the partitions settings in fdisk. With the cylinder being boundaries being wrong it overwrote over your /boot partition or something like that. Only thing I can think of which you could try is:
1. Shrink the disk back to it's original size in vmware.
2. Boot into rescue mode and recreate the same partitions you had before as in exact same partition size/boundaries using fdisk.
3. Restore your lvm volume group from the backups stored in /etc/lvm/archive.
4. Reinstall your kernel.
5. Reinstall grub.

Messing with your partitions has it's risks so there is probably a chance you can't recover from this, that's why keeping backups is important. Lastly since you had an LVM setup you could have just added another vmware disk to the system and then added that to your volume group after which you could then increased the size of your logical volume.
 
Last edited:
Thank you for your reply even with hyperlink of the possible solution, and I will try it. I really sorry about the double post. I will not do that again.

Thanks
Changwan
 

Members online


Top