fsck Failure

[macdude425]

Whenever you bring up my dad's computer in Linux (SuSe 9.1), it boots about halfway and then i get the message:

fsck failed.  Please manually repair and reboot.

It tells you how to mount the drive, but if you do, nothing works right.

Any suggestions???

Thanks!

[Scorpio(Max)]

Try to boot from any boot or live CD distro's, if your fs allows to be mounted as read-only, start fsck...
1 quest. what fs your one???

[MDupreejr]

Is it a clean install? Or what have you done recently that may have played with something to mess up the boot procedure...

[macdude425]

OK, I booted off a Knoppix CD and ran fsck, and there were no problems. Started SUSE again and it did the same thing. It's not a new install, and the only thing I did before it stopped working was to add a modem. I took it out but the comp still didn't work. The filesystem is ext2.

One thing I just realized though; this thing used to have about 300 meg of swap space that has just dissappeared for some reason. Could this cause fsck to whack out??

[macdude425]

Care to put your 2 cents in horndude? I really don't want to have to reinstall SUSE.

[horndude]

If youve got a boot floppy made from when you installed Suse Id use that and boot up and run all the fsck options you can to fix it, doing it with knoppix or anything else probably doesnt change the log file and fsck flag Suse is seeing when it boots.........or you can erase the fsck flag and see what happens, if you can find it.

When the filesystem screws up a flag is generated, but the ext2 filesystem doesnt keep a journal like ext3 or reiserFS so rebuilding the filesystem tree isnt very foolproof.

[macdude425]

OK, I ran fsck several times using Knoppix and the SUSE rescue console on the install CD. It said that there were no errors, but as soon as I brought SUSE back up, it did the exact same thing.

What about e2fsck?

[macdude425]

OK, my dad fixed it. He screwed something up in the kernel and now it is back to normal.

Thanks for all the help!