pausing during boot to check sda4
 

While booting Slackware 13.1 it stops to check sda4. It says something about discrepancies. This started today after leaving the system up overnight. The system was suspended and wouldn't respond. I ended up have to do a hard reboot. The system seems to be working fine, but it does this every time I start Linux. The sda4 partition is Windows XP. XP also is working fine. While Linux is checking sda4 there is a statement that I need to run fsck without options. When I ran fsck I got the following message.
root@b-bhome:~# fsck
fsck from util-linux-ng 2.17.2
e2fsck 1.41.11 (14-Mar-2010)
/dev/sda3 is mounted.

WARNING!!! The filesystem is mounted. If you continue you ***WILL***
cause ***SEVERE*** filesystem damage.

Do you really want to continue (y/n)? no

check aborted.
e2fsck 1.41.11 (14-Mar-2010)
/dev/sda4 is mounted.

WARNING!!! The filesystem is mounted. If you continue you ***WILL***
cause ***SEVERE*** filesystem damage.

Do you really want to continue (y/n)? no

check aborted.

We don't have tools to properly check a NTFS partition under Linux. Just do an forced filesystem check under WindowsXP.

I tried that after I got that warning from fsck. XP finds nothing wrong. I guess I will have to do some reading and see if I can find a way to stop Linux from checking during boot.

Just make ZERO the last parameter of this mountpoint, in /etc/fstab.

Example:

Okay I was mistaken. sda4 is my /home partition. Why does it tell me to do this and then tell me it will damage my file system when I try?

You need to run it, but the volume needs to be offline. If you reboot and log in as root, you might be able to umount /home and then check the volume with something like this:

fsck -a -v /dev/sda4

Otherwise, you can boot a Slackware install CD/DVD and run it from there. Depending on the level of paranoia e2fsck has about your filesystem, you might need other options to force the check to run... the important thing is that you can't run fsck on a mounted filesystem because that's a moving target and can pretty much scramble things.

Booted with a live CD and fixed it.