FSCK
( filesystem check )


Every 20 to 30 times you boot up your computer, after an improper shutdown or power-faillure, the system will perform a filesystem check.

In most cases no problem, however, sometimes in rare cases it may ask you if you want to repair inconsistencies; you press "y" and "Enter" a few times and it will proceed booting.

In some very rare cases it will tell you that you have to do a manual fsck and give you a prompt:
( Now you have to know what partition ( hda? ) was the critical one ! )

( Replace the "?" with the partition number ) The "-p" stands for repair automatically.

( Replace the "?" with the partition number ) e2fsck is a modern, more powerfull version of fsck. The "-f" option forces a more elaborate check.


Sometimes the system tells you to do the check without the "-p" argument, this just means you will have to say "y" a lot of times !


In some very, very rare cases an emergency console will come up, just do the above at the prompt and when done close the console with "Ctrl+d" and the system will continue booting.

If you get these errors often:

( Replace the "?" with the partition number )
This will mark bad blocks on your HD and no more data will be written in those blocks.

( !!! fsck and e2fsck should only be performed on unmounted partitions !!!! )



In very, very, very rare cases a "Super-Block" might get damaged:

( First make some strong coffee ! )

A super-block is the first block of each ext2 or ext3 partition. It has important data about the file system, like size, free space, etc.

A partition with a damaged super-block cannot be mounted. But, ext2 and ext3 keep several super-block backup copies scattered over the partition.

Boot your system with a boot disk. ( I hope you did make one ! ) The location of the super-block backup copies depends on the block size of the file system.
For file systems with 1 KB block size it is at the beginning of each 8 KB (8192 bytes), for file systems with 2 KB sizes it is at the beginning of each 16 KB (16384 bytes) and so on.

You can use:
 

to find out at which byte positions the super-block copies are. With a 1 KB block size, the first backup copy is in byte number 8193 ( 8192+1 ).

To restore the super-block from this copy, do:
 

If that block also happens to be damaged, try the next one at byte number 16385, and so on until you find a good one.

Reboot to activate the changes.


Bruno


-- Apr 28 2003 ( Revised Mar 27 2008 ) --