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I am running a VPS with a provider. It had CentOS and I just couldn't get a couple of things to run. So I wanted to set it up again with ubuntu server.

I asked the provider for a 10GB drive for a temporary backup, so that I would be able to just copy the data when the OS would be reinstalled without re-uploading.

I got the volume, and unfortunately I mounted it and directly created a file system on the volume without creating a partition first, with mkfs.ext4. This actually went well, I was able to copy the data to the volume, I unmounted and reinstalled the OS.

The surprise came now after booting up the new OS, I can't mount the volume back in. So I can't access the backup.

The provider just offered to try a couple of things if I would provide the root password.

I wonder, anyone able to suggest to do something before I give out my root paassword (I actually trust the guys, but always better safe than sorry).

unsafe_where_true
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  • I read this https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/346826/is-it-ok-to-mkfs-without-partition-number and this https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/14010/the-merits-of-a-partitionless-filesystem, and they both suggest that a partitionless system is possible and should work. So the fact that it doesn't mount back anymore makes me suspicious, and now I am absolutely confused and don't recall any details. Did I mount the filesystem correctly the first time? Did it actually copy everything? – unsafe_where_true Feb 06 '20 at 17:38
  • We finally were not able to recover anything, so the external disk has been removed and thus nothing else can be done. Just for the records. – unsafe_where_true Feb 07 '20 at 17:08

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