This is the third time in two day that i have had to re-install linux because when it boots it tells me that i have a corrupted file system. Is there a way to repair the file system? Could it be my hard drive? its getting really fustraiting having to re-install so often, my computer is so slow and the install takes about 4 hours.
oh, i am running rh9 on a celeron 333, 64megs RAM, 10GIG hd.

how do you shutdown? I hope not by hitting the power button b/c that will lead to file system corruption eventually.

Also use ext3 or reiserfs as your filesystem; they are easier to repair. I think you would normally get the option to repair things when the boot stalls because of a bad file system.

i shut down by either ctrl-alt-del or by going to the menu and clicking on shutdown.

i ran fsck in recovery mode, it wouldn't run by it self so i just sat here for the past 15min hitting yes to all the problems and it looks like the computer is back up....
why would it keep doing this though?
could a bad HD be the cause?

ok, so its back up, but i can't access my cdrom, its like there is nothing in the drive but i know the drive is connected because i saw it recognized on boot up

I'd suspect a harddrive failure. Since it's up and running, check out
man fsck
and the the man page for the relevant file system (probably man fsck.ext2) for all the options so you can run a really thorough check from the recovery mode.

ok, i found a 2gig HD i am going to try and use. Also i think i am going to try a lower version and see if the system handles it better (rh7).

While your box is online, try a "dmesg | more", is your cdrom recognized?

When you installed, did you make multiple file systems or just "/" and "swap"?

Since you did a few installs, did you select the "bad block" check option?

Definetly review fstab, logs, dmesg, /var/log/ , etc...to try and identify the cause?

If you reinstall (again), try multiple File systems w/ext2 (maybe most stable?)...this way you can narrow your issues down to a single FS (if bad block)?

You might want to upgrade your packages, I use "apt-get dist upgrade".

Review any errata's RH may have on their support site.

Have you used this hardware for linux before?
You might want to search the net for any possible compatibility issues associated with your hardware....
good luck,
manny

http://ftp.freshrpms.net/pub/freshrpms/redhat/9/apt/

http://apt.freshrpms.net/