Hard drive mounted in read only (After long uptime...)

otjervaag · 09-30-2003, 04:57 PM

Hi!

I have Debian installed on a Dell Inspiron 8100. A couple of times I have not been able to open any new applications or even a terminal window (No warnings or error messages displayed). Yesterday this happened again, and I tried to save a file in The GIMP when I got an error message saying that my hard drive was mounted read-only and the file could not be saved. This seem to happen when the computer has been up for a couple of days. After a boot it is up and running again without problems.

Any clues to what might cause this problem?? As I can't open a terminal window, I can't remount the drive as read-write either....

Thanks for any tips...!

Øyvind

megaspaz · 09-30-2003, 08:11 PM

why can't you open up a terminal?

lectraplayer · 09-30-2003, 08:52 PM

Try to LEAVE a terminal open. I do. Also, you can hit Ctrl, Alt, F1-F6 to get to a terminal. Ctrl, Alt, F7 should get you back into X.

otjervaag · 10-01-2003, 03:25 AM

I'll try to leave a terminal open, and see if I can remount the disk in r/w when the problem occur. The problem happened this morning again, and I managed to get out of X to a terminal. Every second or so error messages popped up saying:

EXT2_fs error (device ide0): ext2_write_inode: unable to read inode block - inode: 'some number' block: 'some other number'
remounting filesystem read-only.

(with different numbers for each error message). Occasionally I also got an error message from ext2_free_branches. Would it have helped to try to remount the filesystem as read/write as it seems it could not even read??

megaspaz: When the problem occurs, I can't open anything at all. Just switch beetween the programs that are already open....

Øyvind.

otjervaag · 10-01-2003, 05:06 PM

Could the ext2_write_inode error be because of a running program, or would it be more of a kernel/system fault?? The function is of course part of the kernel, but could some program have "mis-used" it to create this error??

I just need hints so that I can start looking for solutions to the problem. Keeping a terminal window open is fine, but there is obviously something wrong going on, and I can't sit and watch over my computer at all times, nursing it back to life when this happens...

Øyvind..

quatsch · 10-01-2003, 09:24 PM

have you tried running a file system check? see man fsck for how to do it.

otjervaag · 10-02-2003, 02:01 AM

Only the check that is forced after every time I have to switch my computer off using only the power button. Would a manual check be more thorough?

quatsch · 10-02-2003, 11:10 AM

I think a manual check can be made more thorough than the one at startup. Look at
man fsck and man e2fsck
for the options.

lectraplayer · 10-03-2003, 09:38 PM

That does sound like a disk error. Are the inode numbers the same from boot to boot? Have you noticed a peticular number popping up each time? When your terminal is doing this, is your hard disk light on?

Also, I think he might have a Journalized Ext3 file system. What is the command for checking that? What about FAT filesystems under Linux?

otjervaag · 10-04-2003, 07:42 AM

lectraplayer,

I haven't had the chance to do a more thorough test yet, but I am starting to think that my unstable version of GIMP(1.3.19) has something to do with it. I haven't run that for a couple of days just to check out my theory, and so far the problem has not come up...

The hard disk light stays on permanently when it happens... Can't remember what I chose when I installed Debian (talk about total NOOB...) but I believe it it ext2. Hence the ext2 errors... When I installed, I was asked if I wanted to do a surface scan of my drive. Being the stupid impatient idiot that I am I chose not to. This might be what is coming back to hunt me.

I'll run a more proper check right away and see what the results are.

Øyvind

lectraplayer · 10-04-2003, 08:34 PM

No problem.

I think fdisk will tell you what kind of partitions you have on the entire disk. That light staying on does sound like a disk error. Run fsck like quatsch suggested. (I need to run it on my system though I'm not having errors.) For now, we might can discount the GIMP for the time being, but do remember that thought. Don't wait until the error happens, run fsck NOW! Also, after the initial run, keep running it from time to time for a couple more weeks and see if any more errors pop up. If more come up, you may want to low level format that disk (losing everything) and then install Debian again. After that, run fsck some more. If it finds more errors, you may need to replace the disk.