After installing slack I get this error message after the slackware logo appears:

Checking root filesystem.........
/sbin/e2fsck is a directory while trying to open / /:

The superblock could not be read or does not describe a correct ext2
filesystem.
An error occurred during the root filesystem check.

I am not using ext2 filesystem, I am using reiserfs.
If I disable fsck will this message go away?
I have aleady did fsck /dev/hda1 manually and it did not find any problems.

I do have another error on a like in fstab that I cannot fix because I can only login as read-only.

I'm not familiar with slack but with the distros i've used, if you can get to a shell with the root filesystem mounted (even ro) you should be able to mount it rw to fix fstab. at least that has been my experience, depending on the problem may depend on success rate too.

as far as the specific message regarding e2fsck being a dir, not sure. in fstab is where the fsck field is specified but i'd be more interested in if/why it lists ext2|ext3 instead of reiserfs for your root filesystem in fstab than having the fsck pass no. field set.

And for that reason the problem is probably in his /etc/fstab file. So, take a look at it, and double check that everything is ok.

No its not ok, Theres a line that says "IN USE" under / I did not know that thats where fsck works from. I cannot change fstab because I can only log in as read only under root.

Check if you can boot in single user mode, and see if that helps.

If not, just boot from a livecd, mount your root partition somewhere under /mnt (ie. /mnt/tmp or whatever), then edit /mnt/tmp/etc/fstab.

EDIT: About the relation between fstab and fsck, you might want to check the man page for fstab. Particularly, the part about the "sixth field".

Hi,
Just use your Slackware install cd/dvd to boot as single user then perform the maintenance on the filesystem. Whenever you want to perform maintenance on any filesystem you should be in 'single' user mode to prevent any conflicts no matter the filesystem type.

I did that and I still get this error message:


Checking root filesystem.........
/sbin/e2fsck is a directory while trying to open / /:

The superblock could not be read or does not describe a correct ext2
filesystem.
An error occurred during the root filesystem check.

I am using reiserfs, not ex2.

well you better make sure you are using the huge kernel the rieserf is not suported anymore sence the guy that made it is doing 15 to life in a german prison. you need rieserf suport. this might help you reiserfsck and you will never get past single mode till you mount the drive it it has a super block unreadable then the out put is bad super block. boot a live cd and make the change to your fstab /dev/your drive / reiserfs . the big thing is if you installed the system I hope you pushed enter when asking for what ever kernel because if you chose another then you will need to make and initrd.img to load the riserfs support.
I hope this helps. and if you need the initrd.image just do a reinstall and go with a ext3

Post the entire contents of fstab and the output of fdisk -l.

Drakeo, reiserfs might be damned to death, but as long as it continues being shipped on the vanilla kernel, it must work. I don't advice to use it because I never liked it and has many problems, but that has nothing to do at all with the current topic. I wanted to point that out just to avoid confusion.

The error is very clear: an ext2 fs can't be found. That means that either fstab is incorrect (in one or another way), or the volume is corrupted. Period.

I know your right but if you do a search on this and the new 12.2 it has become an issue. not sure why. but check it out. I think some how during some of the installs they are not getting the right kernel to boot for the reisefs support. and if you look at Pat's read me initrd it always refers to the rieserfs as default wonder why.
Well of course that read me goes back to at least 10.2 what can you say it is a cut and paste world.

If I partition, format and reinstall using ext3 instead of reiser, will that get rid of this error I am getting?

What, exactly, did you do? Are you saying that you get this message when you boot the cd/dvd, or after "fixing" and booting your system?

After you boot the install cd, you will need to mount your filesystem. Assuming that you installed to /dev/sda1 you would enter "mount /dev/sda1 /mnt". At that point you will need to edit the file /mnt/etc/fstab. It is almost certainly corrupted.

Brian

This is exactly what happens.

I formatted, partitioned and installed Slack 12.2.

When I boot up the hard drive that I installed to, It looks as if its going

to boot up, then I get this message:

Checking root filesystem.........
/sbin/e2fsck is a directory while trying to open / /:

The superblock could not be read or does not describe a correct ext2
filesystem.
An error occurred during the root filesystem check.

I reboot, I set the bios to boot from the cd, insert disk one of the

install disks and boot the default kernel on the install disk. From this

point I have tried many different things, I cannot change fstab because I

can only access it read only. Somehow one time I was able to change it but

when I rebooted it returned back to the last settings.

I have ran fsck and it found no problems.

This may be somewhat of a shot in the dark, but have you verified that the /sbin/e2fsck binary exists (and is not a directory)? Given that your root FS is Reiser, it shouldn't make a difference, but it seems like this is the first error message you get.

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When you boot from the install disk and log in, you will see a full filesystem including /etc/fstab. This is _not_ the same one that you have installed on your hard drive. In order to access your _real_ /etc/fstab you will need to mount your file system as I said in my earlier post. Then you will be able to access and edit your real /etc/fstab by editing /mnt/etc/fstab.

Brian

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