After a power surge, your linux server could be rendered un-bootable because of a corrupt file-system journal. If you are lucky and there are no physical errors, then the following could get your computer back to life.
1. Boot the linux box using live-cd (any bootable installer for server computers).
2. Choose “rescue a broken system”.
3. Get to the shell and issue the following command:
4. fsck.ext3 /dev/sda1 (or other, depending on your partition)
5. The list of partitions can be displayed using:
6. fdisk -l