hi all

I just installed Gentoo linux 1.4 and at boot up, run into an error:

checking root filesystem... [!!]
fsck 1.33
Failed to open filesystem
fsck recommends running with --rebuild-sb, etc, etc
unable to rebuild filesystem

fsck exited with signal 6 on dev/ROOT

After that I enter the root password to "manage" the problem, but the root partition is read-only. Does anyone know what could be causing this? I have the Gentoo Live cd, so if necessary I can get around the read-only problem. Here is my (abridged, without the periods) /etc/fstab:

<fs>.............<mount>..........<type>...........<opt>.....................<dump/pass>
/dev/BOOT...../boot..............ext3...............noauto,noatime.........1...1
/dev/ROOT...../.....................reiserfs...........notail,noatime...........0...0
/dev/SWAP....none...............sw..................swap.........................0...0

I've already tried rebuilding the superblock and checking with fsck, no luck there, and I'm sure I the kernel is configured to support ReiserFS, I've already re-compiled with the help of the live CD. I don't really understand the workings of fstab, I guess thats the problem. The boot partition of Gentoo is on hdb1, swap on hdb2, and root on hdb3.

Thanks in advance for your help.

The only time I have seen in fsck message like that was when somebody was running the wrong fsck on a partition. You might want to investigate that.

Btw, is there a reason why your /boot is listed as noauto? I would think you would want that mounted at boot.

I made that little boot change, not sure what I was thinking there. The problem seems to be with fsck, it dies, and makes everything else stop booting. I know the filesystem is fine, but fsck disagrees. How can I modify and tinker around with fsck? Where is it stored?

/sbin is where fsck is stored.

Is there a way to disable fsck's auto-check when booting?

Put a

0

in the 6th field of the relevant /etc/fstab line.

In general:

0 = no check
1 = check filesystem first (typically root partition)
2 = check other Linux filesystems

Looks to me like you forgot to modify your /etc/fstab before you booted Gentoo from the hard disk. Put the CD back in, boot it, then mount the filesystem manually (just like you did during installation) in /mnt/gentoo. With that done you can edit /mnt/gentoo/etc/fstab.

The entries "BOOT", "ROOT", and "SWAP" need to be replaced with the actual device names. For example, on my system, BOOT is hdc1, ROOT is hdc4, and SWAP is hdc3. You can always use fdisk if you forgot your partition information.

Regards,

--
Matt