Loron Woods wrote: > Mandriva Version: Updated Mandriva 2009 Spring > > I don't know whether this is a bug, my harddrive, or what the problem is > as I'm a novice in Linux.
It reads to me that you are having a hardware problem with your machine. The symptoms could match a number of different hardware problems such as failed ram, failed motherboard, failed cpu. This reads to me as most likely to be failed ram but that is only a wild guess. Unfortunately you have reach the GNU Coreutils mailing list. The GNU Coreutils are the basic file, shell and text manipulation utilities of the GNU Operating System. You can learn more about GNU Coreutils here: http://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/ The GNU Coreutils are part of the GNU Operating System. You can learn more about the GNU Project here: http://www.gnu.org/ But you are asking about a Mandriva problem. Actually I think you are having a hardware failure. But we are not a hardware nor Mandriva support forum and the discussion is off topic here in the GNU Coreutils mailing list. Since you are using Mandriva a better place to get software help on your distribution would be your distribution mailing lists. http://lists.mandriva.com/ However even though this is off topic for this mailing list I can't resist suggesting a few things for you to try anyway. The first thing I would do is to examine your system log and look for any errors. Hopefully something will be logged there. This file is usually /var/log/syslog or /var/log/messages or some other similarly named file in /var/log. The next thing I would do is to run 'smartctl' on the disk drive and check if the drive is logging any errors. Run both short and long self tests and see if the drive is failing. sudo smartctl -H /dev/sda sudo smartctl --log=error /dev/sda sudo smartctl -t short /dev/sda sudo smartctl --log=selftest /dev/sda The next thing I would try would be to run a memory test on the machine. I use memtest86+. Your problem really reads as if there is a failed RAM chip. RAM failures can be frustratingly difficult to debug because they tend to be intermittent. Hopefully running memtest86+ overnight will identify a ram problem. If so then this is easily corrected by replacing the bad ram. I am always filled with joy when a flakey system has an identifiable bad ram because that marks the end of the frustrating flakeyness. http://www.memtest.org/ memtest86+ site http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memtest86 wikipedia article The next thing I would do would be to download a KNOPPIX live cdrom image and test the system using it. This would avoid your hard drive and eliminate it from the problem. It is a generally useful thing to have available as well. http://www.knoppix.net/ The next thing I would do would be to unplug every connector on the system and then assemble it with just the bare minimum of components. If you are lucky the problem is a peripheral that could simply be replaced. Sometimes just the act of disassembly and reassembly can cure the problem because it may be that a connection has oxidized and needs to be scrubbed. However you said that you were a novice and may not feel comfortable debugging the hardware. Perhaps you have a friend who is more hardware knowledgeable who could help you? By the way... The fsck issues you are experiencing are due to the crash of the host system leaving the filesystem in an unclean state. Upon boot it detects this and cleans up. This isn't the root cause of the problem but just a symptom cascading from the crash. It is a normal result and recovery after having had a system crash. Some systems allow you to specify the 'fsck -f' option automatically at boot time. This will avoid it asking you to fix each inconsistency manually. Specifying -f automatically is a controversial topic and different people believe the default should be different values. Good luck! Bob
