I was trying to format an external hard drive, but it got all screwy so I rebooted and I guess I didn't unmount or remove it, now when I boot I get an error fsck.ext3 cannot find file or drive and it lets me login to root for maintenance.

Every time I reboot I am stuck on this, the drive is no longer available on the system and it won't boot even though I didn't touch the main boot drives.

Is there a command to clear off the old drive it can't find?

I'm trying shutdown -f to start without fsck but it won't work.

Welcome to LQ!!!

Is it possible for you to share the screenshot? You said it was an external drive so I am assuming you did not make entries in /etc/fstab for it? If you have remove them from maintenance mode. It will be good if you let us know what you mean by "but it got all screwy so I rebooted and I guess I didn't unmount or remove it'

Red hat starts up, then it fails

"Checking filesystems

fsck.ext3: No such file or directory while trying to open /dev/external/ExternalWD

[failed]
An error occurred during the file system check.
Dropping you to a shell: the system will reboot
when you leave the shell.
Give root password for maintenance
(control D to continue)" <--reboots and does it all over again

\dev\external\ExternalWD is the logical volume I made. I could get into it through terminal but not see it in the file explorer, I just wound up rebooting while it was plugged in then unplugged it before it booted, so I'm assuming the computer is looking for that drive.

I was looking in vgreduce to remove the bad drive, I can't seem to get the OS to delete this drive from it's memory. I also tried doing a shutdown -f now to disable fsck but the server never turns off.

quote]Give root password for maintenance
(control D to continue)" <--reboots and does it all over again[/quote]

Did you enter root password here or simply hit control + D? Enter root password and it will take you to maintenance mode. If you are unable to get into maintenance mode then use rescue disk to boot in rescue mode.

Was this external drive part of existing VG or you have created separate VG for it? If you are able to get in maintenance mode then share the output of:

Also, share the output of:

You mentioned that it is a Red Hat box, did you get in touch with Red Hat for assistance?

PVS VGS and LVS put out
Locking type 1 initialisation failed

the last command shows all the normal drives and the one I want to remove
/external/ExternalWD /media/sdc1 ext3 defaults

So how do I get rid of that drive?

I have a customer needing this machine back and I'm hung up on this, if I can get rid of this drive and have it stop looking for it, I'll be good.

Use:

and comment out that line as follows:

save and exit, reboot the box.

i put in the comment, how do I save it?

Hit esc key and then put :wq and then hit enter.

It appears to be read only I found a video showing the guy remounting the drive, I'm trying to figure that out now. After I change the command and it gives me an error, I can't seem to get out of the vi /etc/fstab program to type another command.

You should be aware of how to use vi if you are administering RHEL box. As I mentioned earlier you have to hit Esc key and then type :wq and hit enter. It will allow you to save the file an exit. If it says read only try: hit Esc key and then type :wq! and then hit enter. If it still doesn't work then hit Esc key and then type :q! and hit enter.

I remounted and was able to save my changes

Good, now reboot the box and see if you are able to get pass through that hurdle.

Thank you so so much for your help. I am a pc guy with some mild linux experience, their "administrator" wants them to buy a new $8000 server because their tape drive failed.

You're welcome. I wasn't aware that you haven't worked on Linux, you mentioned RHEL and I thought you to be pretty experienced with Linux.

Please mark the thread as solved!

Enjoy Linux!!!