hi. my computer froze while trying to use grip (again) and i had the option to do a system integrity check. I did and it fails and drops me to a root shell to repair the system (not sure what i need to do to do that) Whenever i reboot from the shell it will go back to do the check even if i don't press y to do so. I booted in knoppix to try fsck and here is the output.

root@0[knoppix]# /sbin/fsck -a /dev/hda1
fsck 1.38-WIP (09-May-2005)
/ contains a file system with errors, check forced.
Error reading block 6127728 (Attempt to read block from filesystem resulted in short read) while doing inode scan.

/: UNEXPECTED INCONSISTENCY; RUN fsck MANUALLY.
(i.e., without -a or -p options)
root@0[knoppix]# /sbin/fsck /dev/hda1
fsck 1.38-WIP (09-May-2005)
e2fsck 1.38-WIP (09-May-2005)
/ contains a file system with errors, check forced.
Pass 1: Checking inodes, blocks, and sizes
Error reading block 6127728 (Attempt to read block from filesystem resulted in short read) while doing inode scan. Ignore error<y>? no

Error while scanning inodes (3067136): Can't read next inode
e2fsck: aborted
root@0[knoppix]#

does anyone know what is the issue and how i can repair it?

Hi!

Unless you know EXACTLY how the filesystem works, select the default. In this case the default is ignore. You can trust the check and safely ignore that error.

Well, obviously (but not helpfully), you've got a short inode block.

I suspect that you lost power whilst the inode was partially written.

A few suggestions:

1) First, see if e2fcsk can fix it. I.e., Let it ignore the error, and see what else it finds, and if it offerers to "fix" it.

2) If that doesn't work (and, sorry, it probably won't) you could try to copy the partition to another drive using, for example, ddrescue and then see what e2fsck can do with the copy.

3) And, when that fails, I'd suggest you wipe the partition and restore it from your dump files.

A question: Why did you post this to general instead of hardware?

the main issue im having with this is that the system integrity check used to ask if you want to do it and said you had to press y in so many seconds. But after i did it once whenever i reboot i get the same prompt but the check runs even if i don't press a button so im stuck in a loop because i don't know how to disable the check from happing next time i reboot.

The "loop" is because you still have a bad file system, and Linux will not, normally, let you run with the fs flagged as "bad."

When e2fsck is run in "non automatic" mode, or from your knoppix DVD, it has to finish and "fix" the problem. That turns off the "bad fs" flag, and breaks the loop.

But, until the problem is fixed, you can't get past that point in the boot process. There are some tool that will let you reset the flag by hand, but running with a bad file system is a good way to kill your drive, and is, really not recommended unless you have a very good understanding of exactly what you're doing at every step.

So, did you try our suggestion of not telling e2fsck to "ignore" the problem? Did it then try to fix it? What happened?

yes i tried ignoring it. i said yes to ignore then it ask to rewrite so i said yes. i forget what the block number was but it was probablly 6 digits long and the last two were 27. then it asked me to ignore it. then the process repeated again for the block ending in 28, so on and so forth. the computer is 4 years old and it is the original drive so not surpise it is shitting out.

Try e2fsck -y. That'll save you typing all those 'y"s . . .

Have you checked your partition settings? Sometimes (very rarely) I think you can get the "short block" because the partition extends beyond the end of the disk. (parted or, if you have it, qtparted might help.)

Can you mount the fs from knoppix (without running e2fsck)? If so, see if you can save your data by copying it to a different drive.

Drives do go bad, but usually not until you've done something brilliant, and before you've run dump.

the only problem is my only other drive is a 8 gig drive and this is a 60 gig drive im having issues with. Sure it isn't filled but i have a lot of my cds ripped that are easily a couple of gigs and the 8 gig already has a good amount on it. i tried putting everything on there when i was switching distros so i could just put it back without having to burn cds or anything and didn't have enough room, i have more data since then.

i was able to get fsck to complete in knoppix and im back into my system. I still can't figure out why the computer is freezing when i try to rip a cd. I think this may have to do with it but i am not sure.

Aug 21 15:05:23 localhost smartd[2364]: Device: /dev/hda, 13 Currently unreadable (pending) sectors
Aug 21 15:05:23 localhost smartd[2364]: Device: /dev/hda, 12 Offline uncorrectable sectors

thanks for your help.