reiserfsck at boot

syvy · 03-14-2006, 05:58 PM

I googled a lot but didn´t find a satisfying solution for my problem:

My Slack 10.2 runs on / with reiserfs, no seperate boot-partition. Unfortunately I need those buggy ATI drivers which have a 'wonderful' side-effect here:

If I close a KDE-session the system freezes. No chance to reboot or do anything else via keyboard or ssh from anonther machine, I have to switch off.

Booting after that gives me the message "filesystem is NOT clean, skipping replaying jounal, root-fs is mounted rw".

I have to boot from a live-CD to make a reiserfsck but that´s very uncomfortable. What can I do to have a "full" reiserfsck at boot time if I forgot again NOT to log out of KDE that way? (Please, dont´t tell me not to forget ;-))

A boot-partition with ext2? An intitrd? Any Ideas?

lslade · 03-14-2006, 09:10 PM

Hello,

I couldn't find a good answer by Googling either but you can try modifying your /etc/fstab file to contain a "1" in the sixth column in the row for your root drive. That should cause a reiserfsck on every boot which is not recommended by most sites and may take some time - but not as much as digging out a live cd...

Keep good backups.

Lola

odevans · 03-14-2006, 09:39 PM

Disclaimer: I have never tried this on the / filesystem, but have tried it on /home and /usr partitions:

Switch to single user mode

Code:

root@box:~#  telinit 1; logout

Log in to single user mode and remount the offending partition read-only

Code:

root@box:~#  mount -o ro -o remount /dev/hda3    #or whatever

Run reiserfsck on partition:

Code:

root@box:~#  reiserfsck /dev/hda3

Remount partition read-write:

Code:

root@box:~#  mount -o rw -o remount /dev/hda3

Return to multi-user mode:

Code:

root@box:~#  telinit 4; logout   #3 for text login, 4 for GUI

Again, I've never tried it on a root partition.

lslade · 03-14-2006, 09:51 PM

Odevans,

Wouldn't you get a "device busy" error on the root filesystem?

Lola

odevans · 03-14-2006, 09:58 PM

Quite possibly - reiserfsck is in /sbin. As I said, I've never done it. It may well be better to use a liveCD like SLAX or knoppix as they'll operate completely independant of the HDD.

syvy · 03-15-2006, 04:17 AM

Thanks for your answers.

I tried a reiserfsck in init1, but you can´t completely unmount the root-fs.
/ is still mounted read-only so that journal replaying is skipped but that´s what I need.

Btw. mounting again rw failes, I have to reboot then. My fstab contains a "1" in the sixth column.
With a seperate boot-partition it must be possible to unmount / completely, or am I wrong?

Please tell me your experiences before I do partition experiments.

odevans · 03-15-2006, 04:49 AM

syvy,

EDIT: I lied (apologies for my memory) - I had done it before and just tried it again with success.

BTW lslade, the 6th field of fstab should always be 1 for the root partition--it should always be, and always be the first FS to be checked for cleanliness--but it won't 'force' a fsck.

Is getting a LiveCD like SLAX an option?

win32sux · 03-15-2006, 07:06 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by odevans

the 6th field of fstab should always be 1 for the root partition--it should always be, and always be the first FS to be checked for cleanliness--but it won't 'force' a fsck.

this is not the case with reiserfs...

you should use a 0 for the fifth field and a 0 for the sixth...

http://www.namesys.com/faq.html#fstab

syvy · 03-15-2006, 02:35 PM

Thanks for the link, win32sux.

I found another interesting statement in the same faq:

Quote:

Can I check reiserfs filesystems for errors without unmounting them?

Reiserfsck in checking mode may run over filesystems mounted read-only. There is no official way to fix mounted filesystems, though. You MUST completely unmount your filesystem in order to have it fixed.

I think it´s time for some partitioning experiments (or another graphics card) ;-(

odevans · 03-15-2006, 03:54 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by win32sux

this is not the case with reiserfs...

you should use a 0 for the fifth field and a 0 for the sixth...

http://www.namesys.com/faq.html#fstab

Thanks--I learn something new every day.