If anyone has any pointers on how I can get LINUX going again, I would appreciate it.

I am using Mandrake 7, but I am a DOS / Windows user.

The power went out unexpectedly. When the power can back up, the boot process started, then stops with an error, and requests the root password to continue. When the root password is entered, the startup process stops completely as if it cannot find the commands to execute.

Here is the startup screen where things come to halt:


/dev/hda5 contains a file system with errors, check forced
/dev/had5:
unattached inode 16401

/dev/hda5: UNEXPECTED INCONSISTENCY: RUN fsck MANUALLY.
(i.e. without –a or –p options)
[FAILED]

*** An error occurred during the file system check.
*** dropping you to a shell: the system will reboot
*** when you leave the shell.
Give root password for maintenance
(or type Control-D for normal startup):

<< I entered user “root” password here >>

bash: id: command not found
bash: dircolors: command not found
bash: tty: command not found
[root@linux /root]#


LINUX seems to recognize the root password as valid (in that it reports a bad password for other data entered here), but then seems unable to continue.

Question: SULOGIN reprompts for the root user password, but I get the same results. Do I need to be in a specific directory for this login to work (as in going into the WINDOWS directory to run WIN.EXE)?

Question: any other ideas / pointers?

Thank you

aaronlc

Hi!

You have a BIG problem.
This happens when the system was shut down suddenly (in your case by power cutoff). Usually this goes without problems, just a quick file system check and it's all right then. But in your case the system was unable to boot again after a node in the file system was lost when the power cut off. Therefore the file system check couldn't complete. The system dumped you to a shell presuming you would fix the problem yourself. The shell is very limited, only enough to fix the file system error. I'm afraid, there is not much to do in this situation, but you could try to fix the error.

If the check starts properly, it would begin asking you a lot of yes-or-no-questions. You should answer the default, which is written on the right like: .......................[y] (the default is y).
When the check is done your system will work without problems. Try it, if it fails come back here

By the way, your question: No, the shell you were dumped to is the shell you have to work in, you can't use your default login here.

Hope this helps

commands:

umount /dev/hda5
fsck /dev/hda5

Running these and taking the default answers ("Fix<y>?" yes each time) allowed me to cleanly re-start the Mandrake system.

Thank you very much.

It seems to have forgotten to run the KDE explorer shell automatically, but I'm sure I can fiugure that part out.

Thank you very much, again.

Sincerely,

aaronlc.

That's *way* later in the boot process. There's a slim chance (too slim to bet anything on) that the power cutoff magically wiped exactly those parts of your disk that contained exactly those parts of the config files that starts up KDE, but... "whelk's chance in a supernova"

--Jonas