Topic: unexpected inconistency, run fsck manually

[Lee Hoay Fern]

Hi,

I need help urgently.

when i reboot my E-Smith server and gateway, i found below error message when it try to checking the file system

checking root file system
unexpected inconsistency, run fsck manually(IE without -1 or -p options)
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 maintenance

What should i do ?
i cant boot now

please assists asap

very urgent

hoay fern

[guestHH]

Hi,

Take a look at this thread, maybe it helps.

http://forums.contribs.org/index.php?topic=4021.msg13873#msg13873

Regards,
guestHH

[Jason]

fsck /

ext2/linux really sucks.

[Lee Hoay Fern]

may i know why it happens and how to avoid it ?

[Jason]

Well, even though Linux is a rock-solid OS, ext2 is not.

It's really hard to say what causes fsck to have to run in manual mode but things like Power Outages, improper shutdowns, hardware issues etc. can cause this to happen.

There are better systems out there than ext2, but until Mitel makes a decision which way to go (reiser, ext3, etc) we are stuck with this filesystem.

For more info on how ext2 and journaling fs's work:

http://www.linux-mag.com/2000-08/journaling_01.html

[Rich Lafferty]

Keep in mind too that fsck isn't saying "Help! I can't fix this by myself!",
but rather just "Hrm, this isn't a normal condition. I better make sure
the sysadmin sees what's going on." It's seldom as catastrophic as it might
sound; it just wants to make sure you know what it's doing and gives you
the opportunity to not proceed in case you know something about the
disk that would make you want to leave it inconsistent.

 -Rich

[Jason]

What about when software RAID is involved?  Having to do an "fsck /" on a software raid system when there may be a bad drive involved might be a big problem...

Of course in fairness to ext2, the same problems might creep up on a journaling file system as well.

Dan Y should put something in the manual about running a "fsck /".  That would really explain to people what's going on when their server is down and won't boot automatically for them.

[Filippo Carletti]

Jason wrote:
>
> What about when software RAID is involved?  Having to do an
> "fsck /" on a software raid system when there may be a bad
> drive involved might be a big problem...

What is the difference between /dev/hda6 and /dev/md1 ?
A RAID set is always consistent.