J D wrote:
> i don't know what i did, but here's the problem: when i try to boot, it
> starts off normally, but when it checks the root filesystem, it fails. this
> is what it says after:
>
> The superblock could not be read or does not describe a correct ext2
> filesystem. If the device is valid and it really contains an ext2
> filesystem (and not swap or ufs or something else), then the superblock is
> corrupt, and you might try running e2fsck with an alternate superblock:
> e2fsck -b 8193 <device>
>
> :Is a directory while trying to open/
> [FAILED]
>
> ***An error occured during the file system check.
> ***Dropping you to a shell; the system will reboot
> ***when you leave the shell.
>
> give root password for maitenance
> (or type Control-D for normal startup):
>
> if i type control d, it just reboots and goes back to the same thing. shit,
> i've only had linux a month. someone please help me out!!
Don't do ctrl-d, give root password to go into maintenance mode, and then
provide a copy of your /etc/fstab file, /etc/lilo.conf, and the output of
dmesg. You'll want to run dmesg so that the output is redirected to a file,
which you could then copy into the email, along with the fstab and lilo.conf
files.
To redirect the output of dmesg to a file, do the following
dmesg > dmesg.out 2>&1
You probably don't need the 2>&1 portion, but it won't hurt to add it.
Or, take a look through the output of dmesg yourself, to see if you find any
other indications of the error.
This is all I can think of recommending at the moment and I wouldn't want to
direct a user to run e2fsck or debugfs. For that, you'ld definitely want to
post to the expert mailing list. I've done this, but not many times;
therefore, I wouldn't want to risk leading you into making your problem worse
than it already is.
You might want to post the follow-up with the additional information
requested, to the expert mailing list anyway. Also, include the version of the
OS involved or in question. You can add the output of
uname -a
for this.
You might also want to try running startx once you're in maintenance mode, to
see what this does. Might not bring up X, but also shouldn't cause any harm.
If it does bring up X, then exit from that and reboot, to see if the problem's
been corrected. I haven't had quite the problem you're describing in this
sense, but occassionally can't bring up X the first time I run startx, but
trying startx again has always worked, so far.
mike
