On Mon, Apr 22, 2002 at 06:28:29AM +0200, Ralf Hildebrandt wrote:
> On Mon, Apr 22, 2002 at 02:33:59AM +0000, yan bai wrote:
>
> > Below are what I tried with 'fsck'
>
> You need to run fsck against the devices, not the directories!
>
> fsck /dev/hda
> for example
Umm, /dev/hda is the "whole disk" device, including the partition
table, and it is rarely the correct thing to try.
Ralf, I'd guess you probably know this, but when giving advice to
someone who is clearly new to being a Unix or Linux System
Administrator, getting the details right is very important.
Yan Bai, check /etc/fstab and find the line where the mount point
(which will be the second field in each line in the /etc/fstab file)
which has the root filesystem ('/'):
For example:
/dev/hda1 / ext2 defaults,errors=remount-ro 0 1
The device in the first column (or field), which in the example above
is /dev/hda1, is the block device of your root filesystem. /dev/hda
represents the first/priamry/master (and perhaps only) IDE disk drive
in your system. The '1' in /dev/hda1 represents that this is the
first partition on the disk.
So to check the root filesystem, simply run the command
fsck /dev/hda1
from your root prompt. Note that you really should check filesystems
before they are unmounted, or in the case of the root filesystem,
while it is mounted still read-only. Since your e-mail messages
showed prompts which said (rapair filesystem), presumably you know how
to get to that prompt; that would be a good place to run the fsck
command.
For more information, I suggest you find a book which has a good
introduction to system administrator. "Linux for Dummies" is not bad.
There is also a wealth of information available on the web. The web site:
www.linuxdoc.org
In particular, you may wish to check out the "Linux System
Adminsitrator's Guide" and then "Linux Administration Made Easy"
documents available on the Linux Documentation Project's web page.
- Ted
