For some unknown reason I turned my PC on and it would not boot up, I get this message : fsck.ext3: Attempt to read block from filesystem resulted in short read while checking ext3 journal for /dev/hdb1
/dev/hdb6: clean, 10/4055296 files, 135463 blocks Failed to check file systems, Do you want to repair errors? (Y/N) (beware, you can lose data)

If I press Y it drops me to a shell and tells me to Press Control-D for normal start-up:
Press Control-D for normal start-up.

If I boot into fail safe the same thing repeats itself.

Can someone explain what is going on and lead me in the right direction?

If I enter my password it asks me (Repair filesystem) 1 # What do I enter here to repair?

d-1

did you modify your partition table? Use Partition Magic or something else that might have messed with it?

That's probably your problem. You'll have to run fdisk with the -p option and print your partition table. This will tell you what it looks like now, and then go into your /etc/fstab and see if your fstab matches your partition table as displayed by fdisk.

Then you can try to load up a live CD or, you can even edit the fstab from the console that you get into by using the cat command. I think you just need to edit the linux partitions back to their proper values, so you can boot back into the OS, and then you can edit the rest.

Hope this helps.

No all I did was shut down the pc overnight. I did not use Partician Magic so I am not sure what is going on.


d-1

well all I can say is to try what I suggested and see if the fstab matches the partition table from fdisk

Hey what I ended up doing was what I knew I could do all along, but wanted to avoid doing it in an effort to save time. I did a reinstall without re-formating my home directory. I am going to have to do some updates again, but was able to save all my documents.

I was trying to see if there was an easier way to fix my problem without doing the obvious.

I appreciate your tips.

d-1

did you even try what i suggested? The solution was probably simpler than just doing a re-install....

Just fyi - I had the same problem dolphans1 had, and it was indeed as you suggested - a mismatch between the way the partition was defined in /etc/fstab and the way it was partioned. Once I corrected the fstab, all was fine.

Thanks!

Excellent! I'm glad that I was able to help at least one person

It frustrates me sometimes on these boards when a problem is posted, suggestions are made, but the OP never responds as to whether or not the suggested solution worked!

I could not even boot to my desktop, or failsafe mode, it came to a point that I was spending more time trying to figure out how to get to my fstab to make corrections, moreover I had a dual boot system making it that much more difficult.

To the other poster, I did respond, perhaps indirectly that it did not work, because I mentioned I had to do a reinstall without formatting.

I appreciate your help or suggestions.

d-1

and another one.. ;-)

The problem wasso obvious that I didnt even think it could be the mismatch of the /etc/fstab entries..

I got my problem when I removed one old hdd and the disk names changed.


Thanks..

cant let this dead thread rest. I have a drive I've suspected of failing. got these same errors from e2fsck ("attempt to read block from filesystem resulted in short read while trying to open"). no adjustments to partitions during the past week, when I was repeatedly moving data to this drive trying to see if it would fail or not <ok, trying to break it>.

finally, today, when I attempted to change to this directory, I got an I/O error.

fsck = attempt to read block from filesystem resulted in short read while trying to open

fdisk = unable to read device

cfdisk = fatal error: cannot read device.

hdparm -i (small i) does return the drive specs and serial #, etc.

anywhoo, I'm a total noob w linux, but this drive has been on the watch list for a week because it kept intermittently failing during write operations or disappearing from samba. I thought it was something configured wrong, but I'm thinking now that its just a bad drive. Maybe somebody can correct me if I'm doing all the wrong things.

Thankfully, no data was lost and I'll just pull the drive and toss it.

love the forum, have learned a lot here during this slack 12 installation and configuration. thanks all!

I just got identical problem and could solve it easily thanks to your post above. How does the partition table - fstab mismatch happen in the first place? That sounds very funny and dangerous at the same time.

regards

ppanyam