To run fsck, all you need to do is be mounted in "read-only" mode on the root
partition. I think you can do this by re-mounting the root partition in
read-only mode from the Console (not in X). I think it can be done at the LILO
boot prompt as well, but I'm not sure of the command line. I think it is
linux r
but don't quote me on this. Then once you are in Linux, mounted in read-only
mode, you can run fsck interactively by just typing
fsck /dev/hd#% (where #=HD number - %=partition number)
fsck will then work it's way through the file system on the partition
indicated, and tell you of any problems found, and ask if you want them fixed.
Hopefully, someone else has better information. The only time I have had any
problems requiring fsck to fix things, the start up script informed me that
there were problems, and gave me the option of being dumped to a shell. I then
was able to run fsck, fix the things which were wrong, and restart the system.
I think that was shortly after upgrading to Mandrake 6.1 (Macmillan 6.5), so I
have never had occasion to start in read-only mode.
I hope I have helped at least a little,
Ernie
On Mon, 25 Oct 1999,Dux Gregis wrote:
| > First, please stop posting in HTML.
| > Second:
| > Which version of Mandrake did you install? If you installed Mandrake
| > 6.0, did you perform the kernel and initscripts upgrade? If not,
| > that's likely the problem. There is a known bug in the 6.0
| > distribution which will cause the hard drives to fail to cleanly
| > unmount. Updating the kernel and initscripts will take care of it.
|
| thanks, I got it working :) but still, if linux doesn't cleanly
| unmount on account of a crash or the like I can't get x windows
| running again. It must be possible to get it working without
| reinstalling linux, running fsck doesn't seem to help (maybe I'm not
| running it properly). Do I need to unmount the root file system from
| a floppy, and, if so, how exactly do I set this up? thanks again
|
| >
| > Alternatively, you may have made that partition visible to windows,
| > which is NOT a good thing, by creating the partition with FDISK from
| > dos/windows. To fix this, you need to completely REMOVE the
| partition
| > using Windows FDISK and then reboot using the install CD or the boot
| > floppy for the installation. Then, use Linux FDISK or Disk Druid to
| > re-create the partition and install from there. One of those two
| > scenarios SHOULD work.
| > John
| >
