Debian crashed, file system is read-only and cannot backup - How Do I find/mount a USB drive?

Posted by Spiros on Server Fault See other posts from Server Fault or by Spiros
Published on 2012-07-02T14:08:14Z Indexed on 2012/07/02 15:17 UTC
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Filed under:

debian

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filesystems

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server-crashes

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read-only

We have a Debian server (vm's) here at work and the server crashed after a power failure. I can only boot the system in maintenance mode, and the whole file system is set to read only. I can run fsck though maintenance mode, however I would like to get a backup of some files before I do. Problem: I cannot access the net since there is no network connectivity in maintenance mode, and for some reason I try to add a USB flash drive to the computer but I can't find it through the console.

Question: how to you find/mount a usb drive on Debian? I have tried several resources from the internet but nothing worked. Is there any other way I could get a backup of my files? I cannot start networking since the filesystem is set to read only.

Any help would be appreciated.

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