On an upgrade from 7.10 to 8.04 Ubuntu refused the restart....on a maintenance shell it registered „fsck died with exit status 8...file system check failed, please repair manually“. Apparently its a problem with hda7, home folder. Can somebody please hel me out here?

well you need to run fsck hda7. two ways boot up in recovery mode or if you are booted into a system as root umount /dev/hda7 then fsck -y /dev/hda7 some systems require you to type e2fsck instead of fsck.

fsck doesn't show any problems...

Reiserfs journal '/dev/hda7' in blocks [18..8211]: 0 transactions replayed
Checking internal tree..finished
Comparing bitmaps..finished
Checking Semantic tree:
finished
No corruptions found
There are on the filesystem:
Leaves 1381
Internal nodes 10
Directories 1310
Other files 7356
Data block pointers 141685 (2568 of them are zero)
Safe links 0
###########
reiserfsck finished at Sun Mar 8 04:57:40 2009

post your /etc/fstab file and your /boot/grub/menu.1st file

# /etc/fstab: static file system information.

#

# <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>

proc /proc proc defaults 0 0

# /dev/hda5

UUID=c5101ab0-f78e-4ea9-847f-2d9a3dc46a3a / reiserfs notail 0 1

# /dev/sda1

UUID=13DCF6A55EFADC19 /media/sda1 ntfs defaults,nls=utf8,umask=007,gid=46 0 1

# /dev/sda5

UUID=4F73DA99F0DCD0C4 /media/sda5 ntfs defaults,nls=utf8,umask=007,gid=46 0 1

# /dev/sda6

UUID=B2C4ABDA5DF0D5B9 /media/sda6 ntfs defaults,nls=utf8,umask=007,gid=46 0 1

# /dev/hda6

UUID=203ed7dd-9c2b-4c14-bd42-6acb54356e61 none swap sw 0 0

/dev/hdc /media/cdrom0 udf,iso9660 user,noauto 0 0

/dev/hdd /media/cdrom1 udf,iso9660 user,noauto 0 0

/dev/hda7 /home reiserfs nodev,nosuid 0 2


# menu.lst - See: grub(8), info grub, update-grub(8)
..................................................................................
## ## End Default Options ##



title Ubuntu 8.04.2, kernel 2.6.24-23-generic

root (hd0,4)

kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.24-23-generic root=UUID=c5101ab0-f78e-4ea9-847f-2d9a3dc46a3a ro quiet splash

initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.24-23-generic

quiet



title Ubuntu 8.04.2, kernel 2.6.24-23-generic (recovery mode)

root (hd0,4)

kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.24-23-generic root=UUID=c5101ab0-f78e-4ea9-847f-2d9a3dc46a3a ro single

initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.24-23-generic



title Ubuntu 8.04.2, memtest86+

root (hd0,4)

kernel /boot/memtest86+.bin

quiet



### END DEBIAN AUTOMAGIC KERNELS LIST



# This is a divider, added to separate the menu items below from the Debian

# ones.

title Other operating systems:

root





# This entry automatically added by the Debian installer for a non-linux OS

# on /dev/sda1

title Microsoft Windows XP Professional

root (hd1,0)

savedefault

makeactive

map (hd0) (hd1)

map (hd1) (hd0)

chainloader +1

try this.

The system won't recognise /dev/hda7 because on upgrade to 8.04 partition allocations/names change....
Current fdisk -l output, live CD 8.04.2

Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x3ddf3dde

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda2 * 2 9729 78140160 f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sda5 2 6375 51199123+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda6 6376 6694 2562336 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda7 6695 7331 5116671 83 Linux

Disk /dev/sdb: 320.0 GB, 320072933376 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 38913 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x1fdc1fdb

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 * 1 12749 102406311 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sdb2 12750 38913 210162330 f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sdb5 12750 22311 76806733+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sdb6 22312 25499 25607578+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sdb7 25500 25742 1951866 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sdb8 25743 28302 20563168+ 83 Linux
/dev/sdb9 28303 37863 76798701 83 Linux
/dev/sdb10 37864 38913 8434093+ 83 Linux
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$



....but when fdisk -l is exercised on bootup/recovery mode sdb1-10 becomes sda1-10 and sda2...becomes becomes sdb2....
Is this normal?

try this.edit your /etc/fstab yes this is normal the ubuntu to system does not use hda or any hdx any more. this was to keep the auto mount of external drives simple. It is just there scripts and for them it is much more simple for there custom kernel to treat everything as a scsi device it forces the system to read the device then load it. either at boot or when plugging in an external device.

O.k.,but why change designation from sda to sdb....it just makes things more difficult!

Try assigning your partitions in fstab by their uuids. Ubuntu now sets up fstab and grub's menu.lst by uuids. To get the uuids for your partitions run:
or
Then change your fstab for /dev/sda7 so it looks like the entry for /dev/hda5. Something like:
Where uuid_number is the output you get for /dev/sda7 in blkid. This should avoid any hda / sda or sda / sdb naming issues.

Works with UUID's, now booting into Hardy.
That was my "test" installation. I`ve just upgraded my "working" system (also "Hardy")
Problem...
boot menu still shows „Ubuntu 7.10 Kernel 2.6.22.16“

..$ cat /etc/issue
Ubuntu 8.04.2 \n \l

..$ lsb_release -a
No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description: Ubuntu 8.04.2
Release: 8.04
Codename: hardy

HUH?!

Does the grub menu list the entries for Hardy? I assume it is since the output of cat /etc/issue ans lsb_release -a shows Hardy.
You can just edit the /boot/grub/menu.lst and remove the entries for Ubuntu 7.10. Add any entries for Hardy to menu.lst if you need to.