It was bound to happen–I was copying my music files over from my main Kurobox disk to the backup USB drive and noticed a few i/o errors. I dismounted the /datafiles/ file system and tried to do an fsck which did not go well, basically I lost the root filesystem out from under the running kernel. A reboot first brought the Kuro into EM mode, from which I tried to start another fsck, which also didn’t really work.
I tried rebooting again (since I haven’t done the serial port mod on my Kuro, I can’t tell what’s happening on boot) and it was probably hanging on boot. But it’s also likely that it was doing an fsck itself on bootup and would eventually boot up, provided things weren’t too swiss-cheesed.
But I decided to take a closer look. I opened the Kuro Box (BTW, opening it allowed me to also spray some WD-40 in the case fan which makes it run much quieter now), removed the drive, and put it into the USB carrier my backup drive is in. Of course I didn’t get the IDE cable in firmly at first and couldn’t read the disk, which of course sent me into a panic.
But I fixed that, and my computer recognized it, and automounted both the root and /datafiles file systems. Mostly intact. So the good news is that once I run the fscks I should be able to boot again. And at least I haven’t lost everything if I have to rebuild the Kuro.
Of course, I was thinking of upgrading anyway. So maybe this is my big opportunity. . .