RH7.2-E2FSCK says Filesystem already mounted?!?
 

The good news is that I know I didn't do anything other than the defaults on this one. The bad news is that I can't boot now because E2FSCK aborts because "Checking root filesystem: /dev/hda1 is mounted. e2fsck: Cannot continue, aborting..."

My process:

1- Formatted hard drive
2- Partitioned hard drive (3gb for /)
3- Installed RH 7.2 using defaults
4- Registered it with RedHat Network (it's free for the first system)
5- Installed all the updates recommended including kernel updates
6- rebooted

Immediately after rebooting, GRUB now has two entries in it:

Red Hat Linux (2.4.9-31)
Red Hat Linux (2.4.7-10)

Since the first entry is selected by default, it begins the process.

Welcome to Red Hat Linux
...
...

Checking root filesystem
/dev/hda1 is mounted. e2fsck: Cannot continue, aborting.

...
...

I tried rebooting a couple of times and experienced the same problem each time selecting the same entry in GRUB. Selecting the older version boots just fine, although it forced a filesystem check when starting.


The next time I rebooted I took a look at the boot commands from GRUB. Here they are:

==========
Red Hat Linux (2.4.9-31)
==========
root (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.4.9-31 ro root=/dev/hda1
initrd /boot/initrd-2.4.9-31.img

==========
Red Hat Linux (2.4.7-10)
==========
root (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.4.7-10 ro root=/dev/hda1
initrd /boot/initrd-2.4.7-10.img


I'm by no means an expert. Heck, I'm not even intermediate with Linux at this point. I did do whatever queries I could online and through my books to see if there was anything simple that I could do. I saw a number of references to similar problems and most of them said that the entries in LILO were to blame. Since I'm using GRUB (right?) and the entries look almost exactly similar, I'm stumped.

Before I go further, anyone have ideas or suggestions? The good new for troubleshooting is that where you would normally ask "Did you do this?" or "Did you change ______?" my answer will be no...this is a clean system.

Thanks in advance.

Try booting from the install CDs, going into rescue mode and fsck the partition(s) from there.

Tried running under the rescue as suggested...no dice. fsck reports that the drive was not unmounted properly and then does the check, again reporting no errors. Reboot still causes the same error at the same point.

Another person suggested that there may be a problem with the mtab, but offered no suggestions as to what it might be. It was suggested that I "look at the copy of mtab that was created before the upgrades and compare it with the one afterwards." I don't see where a backup would have been created. Anyone?

My /etc/mtab looks like this:

==
/dev/root / ext2 rw 0 0
/proc /proc proc rw 0 0
/dev/pts /dev/pts devpts rw 0 0
/proc/bus/usb /proc/bus/usb usbdevfs rw 0 0
/dev/cdrom /mnt/source iso9660 ro 0 0
/dev/loop0 /mnt/runtime cramfs ro 0 0
/dev/hda1 / ext2 rw 0 0
none /dev/pts devpts rw 0 0
none /proc proc rw 0 0
/dev/hda2 /usr ext2 rw 0 0
usbdevfs /proc/bus/usb usbdevfs rw 0 0
==

I'm too new to see if there's anything glaringly wrong here.

As a general rule, a backup copy of a file is called the same thing, but with a ~ at the end. Look and see if you have both mtab and mtab~