I am running linux Red Hat 7.1 with mrtg and rrdtool installed for monitoring internet traffic usage. My system shutdown when a power failure occured and now refuses to boot up completely, stopping at ' freeing unused kernel memory: 228k freed' .

please what do i do?

Hello,
I've just moved your thread to Linux-General. Member Intro is a good place to say 'hello', but questions should be posted to other forums. Please choose the forum to post more carefully next time.

You probably need to run fsck on the main partition. You need a boot disk or installation cd in rescue mode (any rescue cd will do, the distro is not important). What you need to do is to boot it and then run
fsck /dev/hdaX
where /dev/hdaX is your / partition (it's probably /dev/hda1).

I also recommend you to convert your filesystem (I guess it's Ext2) to Ext3. It doesn't require formatting and makes your system more secure (harder to loose data) in case of power failure (or accident power off).

Thank you Mara but when i try to load with my linux cd to rescue mode, it stops at

NET4: Unix domain sockets 1.0/SMP for Linux NET4.0.
VFS: Cannot open root device "" or 08:41
Please append a correct "root=" boot option
Kernel panic : VFS: Unable to mount root fs on 08:41


So what do i do now ?

You need to boot it from the cd with an option. After first statup screen, there's one you usually just press enter (it asks for extra parameters). Type 'root=/dev/hdaX' where /dev/hdaX is the right partition (/), probably /dev/hda1.

i entered the command 'linux rescue root=/dev/hda1' at the prompt of the linux cd #1.

the system then started to boot and stopped at

... autorun DONE.
NET4: Linux TCP/IP 1.0 for NET4.0
IP Protocols: ICMP, UDP, TCP
IP: routing cache hash table of 1024 buckets, 8Kbytes
TCP: Hash tables configured (established 8192 bind 8192)
NET4: Unix domain sockets 1.0/SMP for Linux NET4.0.
EXT2-fs warning: mounting unchecked fs, running e2fsck is recommended
VFS: Mounted root (ext2 filesystem).
Freeing unused kernel memory: 108k freed

so what do i do now?

i have also tried hda1 - 7 and it still woudn't boot up completely in rescue mode.

Mara i have posted one earlier you have not replied to, so you can read that as well to know what i have done so far.

This time i have also used a linux boot diskette which i created while installing a new linux box using a exact type and spec of system but with a 3GB hard disk (the one giving me problems is 10GB). It is a linux Red Hat 7.2 boot disk however (the system with problems is running Red Hat 7.1)
Below is the error i get when booting with this diskette.
So please what next?

IP Protocols : ICMP,UDP,TCP,IGMP
IP : Routing cache hash table of 512 buckets,4Kbytes
TCP : Hash tables configured(established 4096 bird 4096)
Linux IP multicast router 0.06 plus PIM-SM
NET4 : Unix domain sockets 1.0/SMP for Linux NET4.0
RAM DISK : Compressed image found at block 0
Freeing initrd memory : 399k freed
Vfs : Mounted root (ext2 filesystem)
RedHat nash version 3.2.6 starting
Loading jbd module
Jounalled Block Device driver loaded
Loading ext3 module
Loading 3c59x module
PCI : Found IRQ 11 for device 00:09.0
3c59x : Donald Becker and others.www.scyld.com/network/vortex.html
00.09.0 : 3com PCI 3c905B cyclone 100baseTX at 0xdc00.vers LK1.1.16
Mounting /proc filesystem
Creating root device
Mounting root filesystem
Ext3 : No journal on filesystem on ide0(3,5)
Mount : Error 22 mounting ext3
Pivotroot : Pivot_root(/sysroot/sysroot/initrd) failed :2
Freeing unused kernel memory :220k freed
Kernel panic : No init found.Try passing init = option to kernel

OK..Try it the different way. Don't boot in rescue mode, start installation and when you choose keyboard and so on press ctrl+alt+F2 (or ctrl+alt+f1 or ctrl+alt+f3), you should see console and be able to run fsck...

Mara good day
Its been quite a while. Ihave not been able to attend to this issue cause i have been busy at work.

I tried the last thing you told me and i was able to get to console with ctrl+alt+f2
sh-2.04#
But when i type fsck /dev/hda1 (i even tried up to hda5)

It tells me the following:

Parallelizing fsck version 1.19 (13-Jul-2000)
WARNING: couldn't open /etc/fstab: No such file or directory
e2fsck 1.19, 13-Jul-2000 for EXT2 FS 0.5b, 95/08/09
fsck.ext2: Is a directory while trying to open /dev

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 a swap or ufs or something else), then the superblock is corrupt, and you might try running e2fsck with an alternate superblock:
e2fsck -b 8139 <device>

sh-2.04#


Please Where do i go from here

Thank you for staying with me Mara

Forgot to write it earlier: rescue floppy for RH 7.2 won't work - it was created for a system with different partition scheme (and probably with different partition as /).

Let's try what the program suggests - use backup superblock. Unformtunately the location may be different. The error message gave you an example:
e2fsck -b 8139 <device>
Where <device> is /dev/hda1 in your case.
The values after -b option (specifying where the superblock is) may be: 8193, 16384, 32768. One of the values should work.