linux hard drive problem!!!

[maryam421]

Hi,
I am new to subject so please forgive my ignorance. I have red hat Linux 9.0 on Pentium 3 500 MHz.
I tried to delete certain files and the it just hung there. I used the rm -Rf /<directory name>. I opened another session and try to kill the rm command. But it never got killed. So at that point I decided to reboot the system.
Now when it to comes to read the hard drive it goes to force checking and failed. At that point it asks for root password. When I supply the root password it logs on to the machine in maintenance mode. I used command fsck but did do much.
Please help. As I don't want to reinstall the Linux. Any commands that can fix that problem.
Thanks

 

[BIS]

ehem, what <directory name> did you delete?

 

[maryam421]

Well I have deleted the an oracle directory from /tmp that was created during the installation.
Oracle recomends that directory needs to be deleted if oracle softaware needs to be installed again.
Thanks for your reply.

 

[fdalmoro]

I think most would agree that it sound like you rm'd more than just a /tmp.

What was your pwd?
What was the exact path and name of the directory that was going to be removed?
What was the exact command you ran?

Fernando

 

[pr0n603]

lol

yea, i remmember the 1st time i did "rm -rf /"
My boss wasnt happy!

maryam, if you can still log onto the machiene. See if all your directories are intact. if not, try botting in emergency mode (at the boot prompt, type "<image_name> emergency" usually image name is something like "linux" or "vmlinuz") and looking at the file system.

good luck

 

[marsd]

Even if the damage was local to /tmp many programs write
their state data and create persistent named pipe and
unix socket IPC stuff there. I once created a system that
would not boot properly by deleting the contents of /tmp...
Important word: once.

 

[maryam421]

I was sitting in /tmp directory. And run the command
rm -rf oraInstall

I can log into the box as recovery mode.
Also it seems to be a problem with /dev/hda3 swap.
Thanks for all your reply.

 

[marsd]

Seems pretty innocent..to have caused such a dysfunctional
situation.
I would boot from a linux rescue Cd for your distro or get something like knoppix,boot, mount your drives and take
a look at what has been deleted and from where.

 

[maryam421]

Problem fixed. On recovery prompt I did fsck and then did init 5.
It asked me for new hardware found and if I want to install it. I contined whitout installing the new hardware and every thing is working fine.
Thaks for all your help.