first of all, I am a linux enthusiast.

I have been using Linux on and off since 1995. As a "veteran" newbie. I have found that Linux is not as stable as even I would like to admit.

Further, Linux's file system is a bit fragile. It tend to lost track of its supernode after two improper shutdown.

That is the reason why I jumped onto ext3. I was hoping that it would introduce certain toughness into the system.

It is indeed tougher than my old trusted ext2. However. I am running into trouble again.

Right now, I as I boot, it will go through the usual fsck routine, then, it start to display something like this:

/boot: recovering journal
/boot: recovering journal
/boot: recovering journal
. . .

after a while, (displaying something like 100+ /boot: recovering journal messagee) the entire computer would just halt, nothing i can do but physically power down the computer.

I would reboot again, but it will go through the same cycle without much success.

any idea on how to recover it?

kngharv

couldn't you boot with the rescue (first installation cd) and then through the boot-logs figure out what exactly goes wrong and go from there?

Anne

You know, the strange thing is that I can repeat the process of fsck -y , go through the boot:/recoverying journal until it get stuck... power down, power back up, and repeat the whole process again and again and again... and for some reason, it will eventually recovery everything by itself....

I have recovered improper shut down like this dozen of times... a bit painful because I need to be physicallly there to reboot the machine once a while. Having said that, I have to say i am amused by the fact that this ext3 always managed to recover itself.

As for boot log... can you give me any lead on how to do that? is that any different from reading the dmesg ?

Thanks in advance