Partitions / Filesystems / Bootloaders etc

Hi,
I'm migrating some disaster recovery software from NT to Solaris.
On NT this is done in four steps...
1) Partition the hard disk, using partition table info stored prior to the disaster
2) Format the partitions
3) Restore the operating system & any critical files to get the system up & running
4) Restore the bootloader in order to make the system bootable
We can then simply boot the system & use normal Backup / Restore software to restore all our data from a backup
I hope someone out there can answer the following questions...
1) As I understand it SPARC hardware uses a Volume Table Of Contents (VTOC) rather than a partition table. Does this mean that the disk has just one big partition, or is there no concept of partitions at all in SPARC?
2) Is the VTOC just a file that we can write to the start of the "partition" during our disaster recovery process? (Having backed it up prior to our disaster of course)
3) What filesystem does Solaris use on SPARC? Is it Unix File System (UFS) or something proprietary to Sun ?
4) Having formatted our disk with the relevant filesystem, recovered our VTOC, restored a minimal set of operating system files we now need to make our system bootable. Where does the bootloader live ? i.e. what is the equivalent of the Master Boot Record on DOS / Windows?
5) Are any of the answers to the above questions different if Solaris is running on x86 hardware instead of SPARC?
6) Or if Solaris is running on x86 & dual booting alongside NT?
Thanks for any help
Kevin Neave

Hi,
U seem to be a windows freak never mind every 1 makes mistake.
VTOC :Volume table of contents contains partition information of the disk no of cylindrical groups per partition which is stored in the first sector of the disk (also called disk label ) the subsequent 15 sectors contain the bootblk fallowed by the superblk which contains the information of the entire disk in a index'd content fallowed by the backup superblk which is a copy of the superblk information stored in many location in the disk (different data blocks) for retendency.
In case of any system boot failure U can fix the corrupted boot problem by booting the system with information stored about bootblk in alternative superbloks
the command #news -N /dev/dsk/c0t0d0s0 // will give the list of backup up of boot inforation location in the same disk which can be passed as a parameter so that the system boots with alternate clean uncorrupted information of boot,(this is usually an 4or5digit no)
So need not carry the recovery disk as u do in windows !!
Boot location:The boot block is present in all the disk but it is active only on the disk which has root partition.
Solaris bootblk location # /usr/paltform/`uname -m/lib/fs/ufs/bootblk
File system:
The file system in unix file system in solaris of'coz propriety of SUN.
As for as X86 is concerned U can have dual boot with solaris and windows
There is separate installation CD's for intel and sparc for solaris OS, the sparc platform installation CD's can not be used on intel.
Cheers,

Similar Messages

Partitions / Filesystems etc

Hi,
I'm migrating some disaster recovery software to Solaris.
On NT or Linux this is done in four steps...
1) Partition the hard disk, using partition table info stored prior to the disaster
2) Format the partitions
3) Restore the operating system & any critical files to get the system up & running
4) Restore the bootloader in order to make the system bootable
We can then simply boot the system & use normal Backup / Restore software to restore all our data from a backup
I hope someone out there can answer the following questions...
1) As I understand it SPARC hardware uses a Volume Table Of Contents (VTOC) rather than a partition table. Does this mean that the disk has just one big partition, or is there no concept of partitions at all in SPARC?
2) Is the VTOC just a file that we can write to the start of the "partition" during our disaster recovery process? (Having backed it up prior to our disaster of course)
3) What filesystem does Solaris use on SPARC? Is it Unix File System (UFS) or something proprietary to Sun ?
4) Having formatted our disk with the relevant filesystem, recovered our VTOC, restored a minimal set of operating system files we now need to make our system bootable. Where does the bootloader live ? i.e. what is the equivalent of the Master Boot Record on DOS / Windows?
5) Are any of the answers to the above questions different if Solaris is running on x86 hardware instead of SPARC?
6) Or if Solaris is running on x86 & dual booting alongside NT?
Thanks for any help
Kevin Neave

Hi,
U seem to be a windows freak never mind every 1 makes mistake.
VTOC :Volume table of contents contains partition information of the disk no of cylindrical groups per partition which is stored in the first sector of the disk (also called disk label ) the subsequent 15 sectors contain the bootblk fallowed by the superblk which contains the information of the entire disk in a index'd content fallowed by the backup superblk which is a copy of the superblk information stored in many location in the disk (different data blocks) for retendency.
In case of any system boot failure U can fix the corrupted boot problem by booting the system with information stored about bootblk in alternative superbloks
the command #news -N /dev/dsk/c0t0d0s0 // will give the list of backup up of boot inforation location in the same disk which can be passed as a parameter so that the system boots with alternate clean uncorrupted information of boot,(this is usually an 4or5digit no)
So need not carry the recovery disk as u do in windows !!
Boot location:The boot block is present in all the disk but it is active only on the disk which has root partition.
Solaris bootblk location # /usr/paltform/`uname -m/lib/fs/ufs/bootblk
File system:
The file system in unix file system in solaris of'coz propriety of SUN.
As for as X86 is concerned U can have dual boot with solaris and windows
There is separate installation CD's for intel and sparc for solaris OS, the sparc platform installation CD's can not be used on intel.
Cheers,

Best stable media partition filesystem for Linux/OSX dual boot

Hi there, dual booting linux and Snow Leopard.. I am re-formatting my media partition (which I keep separate from the linux and osx files so as to keep them safe if I want to reinstall/upgrade the operating systems or mess something up), and was wondering as to the best filesystem I should pick? I would do ext4, but from what I understand osx cannot read/write to it natively or in a stable fashion. Keep in mind the media partition will be used to hold/read all the files when using the computer, including when watching movies, playing music, writing documents, storing photos, etc..
Any suggestions? Thanks!

gagejd wrote:How bad is this instability with hfs+? Am I going to lose some files or corrupt a few documents when I randomly reboot the computer, or shutdown improperly?
I rarely reboot or shutdown improperly, so I have no insights to offer into the impacts of these behaviours on HFS+ in Linux.
IIRC, I once had a catastrophic and irreparable error when I used the command line in Linux to change a directory name on an HFS+ filesystem from being all lowercase to start with an uppercase letter. I had to restore the filesystem contents from backup.
Other than that, I have lots of minor, easily fixable, but somewhat troublingly frequent errors with incorrect numbers of inodes and such like.
If you are bringing Windows into the equation, I seem to recall a Slashdot article from within the last couple of years which had a question re: sharing files in a triple-boot environment (Windows, OS X, and Linux). If you can track down the article, the comments may be useful.

[SOLVED] Converting the var partition filesystem from ReiserFS to ext4

Hi,
I have a system that still uses ReiserFS for its /var partition. It gives me some performence problems which make me want to convert it to the newer ext4. Can it be done without reinstalling the entire system? and if so, how?
Last edited by Greenstuff (2013-10-05 14:01:41)

Boot to a live environment.
Mount the var partition and copy somewhere or tar it up.
Umount the var partition.
Format the old var partition to ext4.
Mount the newly formatted var partition.
Copy back or untar the archive.
Reboot.
EDIT: Make sure you adjust the fstab in the root partition before you reboot!
Last edited by graysky (2013-10-05 15:14:31)

Upgrading ZFS packages (filesystems, tools,etc) without doing an OS upgrade

Hi everyone,
Is there a way to upgrade all ZFS libs, binaries, etc without having to retort on a full-install or os upgrade ?
I'm running Solaris 10u5, I've read that many new features (esp. concerning snapshots) are available on 10u6. I can't put the server offline for much time and can't upgrade it to 10u6+ . I'd only need to upgrade all ZFS-related parts (... live, if possible !).
Is there a way to do this ?
Thanks,
Jeff

If you can find some spare disk space, you might want to look into liveupgrade to minimize your downtime. This might make it possible for you to upgrade. With liveupgrade, you should be able to keep your downtime to something a little bit longer than one or more reboots depending on the current state of your installation.
If you want to upgrade ZFS packages to get some of the newer features, like moving your / file system to ZFS, you probably can't just upgrade ZFS packages to get that functionality. A feature like that involves quite a bit of support outside of the ZFS packages.

[SOLVED] Bootloaders and partitioning (Syslinux and GPT)

I don't understand why this is so difficult.
All I want to do is install Arch over two partitions (boot and root, both ext2) on a GPT disk, doesn't matter which bootloader. But I can't find any obvious way to do this. My understanding of partitioning and MBR's and bootloaders is probably a bit lacking.
When I use gdisk to create the partitions, and then try to install syslinux, I always get an error about not being able to set the legacy BIOS bootable attribute, even if I set it beforehand with gdisk. Tried various things and I have yet to create a bootable disk. No luck with GRUB2 yet either.
Is there a more idiot-proof way to get this up and running? I've looked through the Beginner's Guide, Installation Guide, the wiki pages on these bootloaders, etc. Re-partitioning and re-pacstrapping after each and every attempt at configuring a bootloader is making this take all day.
Last edited by joebrooks (2012-08-04 02:48:03)

silentsnake wrote:Just do it manually – this worked for me.
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Sy … al_Install
Follow the steps for GPT while you are in your chroot environment (after running arch-chroot). If sgdisk is missing install the gptfdisk package via pacman.
That did it, thank you.
Three polite responses in a day... Pretty good first impression of the Arch community.
I'm using ext2 btw because I read somewhere I shouldn't use a journaling file system on the SSD in my Eee PC 2G Surf. Hoping that won't create any headaches for me later.

[SOLVED]Cannot mount partitions with PCMANFM --no longer an issue

Hi,
I have searched and searched and pulling my hair out on this issue. I am using PCMANFM .9.10 on an LXDE install using the Arch x86 iso. My HD contains several linux partitions and a FAT32 partition.
I am not able to mount these partitions in PCMANFM. I am able to mount my usb flash drive
When trying to mount a partition in PCMANFM I get a "not authorized to perform operation" error message.
Today, June 11 I partially rewrote this due to the lack of response I am getting on this problem.
1. did a reinstall of Arch & LXDE today. I've done two or three installs. dbus is in daemons in /etc/rc.conf
2. initially the partition icons did not show up
3. then, I installed gvfs and added 55-my-conf.pkla in /etc/polkit-1/localauthority/50-local.d/
4. With that the partition icons show up in PCMANFM
5. But I still get the "not authorized to perform operation" message
The 55-my-conf.pkla has this content:
[Storage Permissions]
Identity=unix-group:storage
Action=org.freedesktop.udisks.filesystem-mount;org.freedesktop.udisks.drive-eject;org.freedesktop.udisks.drive-detach;org.freedesktop.udisks.luks-unlock;org.freedesktop.udisks.inhibit-polling;org.freedesktop.udisks.drive-set-spindown;org.freedesktop.udisks.filesystem-mount-system-internal
ResultAny=yes
ResultActive=yes
ResultInactive=no
contents of .xinitrc
#!/bin/sh
# ~/.xinitrc
# Executed by startx (run your window manager from here)
if [ -d /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc.d ]; then
for f in /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc.d/*; do
[ -x "$f" ] && . "$f"
done
unset f
fi
# exec gnome-session
# exec startkde
#exec startxfce4
exec startlxde
# ...or the Window Manager of your choice
At /usr/share/polkit-1/actions/org.freedesktop.udisks.policy
I changed <action id="org.freedesktop.udisks.filesystem-mount-system-internal">
mount a system-internal disk at <allow_active> from "auth_admin_keep" to "yes".
Still didn't work!
Either this is a bug or I have a permission problem somewhere.
Can you please advise how to do this or point me to a recent tutorial to be able to auto mount other partitions not using /etc/fstab? Some of the older posts refer to hal or other package that have been deprecated.
Thanks
Edit: latest. It seems that I must mount the desired partition from the terminal. example: $sudo mount /dev/sda5 /mnt
then can edit it from PCMANFM by going to / and then /mnt. Apparently I do not have to manually unmount.
Last edited by linuxloverjerry1 (2012-06-13 04:25:37)

Hi,
I have searched and searched and pulling my hair out on this issue. I am using PCMANFM .9.10 on an LXDE install using the Arch x86 iso. My HD contains several linux partitions and a FAT32 partition.
I am not able to mount these partitions in PCMANFM. I am able to mount my usb flash drive
When trying to mount a partition in PCMANFM I get a "not authorized to perform operation" error message.
Today, June 11 I partially rewrote this due to the lack of response I am getting on this problem.
1. did a reinstall of Arch & LXDE today. I've done two or three installs. dbus is in daemons in /etc/rc.conf
2. initially the partition icons did not show up
3. then, I installed gvfs and added 55-my-conf.pkla in /etc/polkit-1/localauthority/50-local.d/
4. With that the partition icons show up in PCMANFM
5. But I still get the "not authorized to perform operation" message
The 55-my-conf.pkla has this content:
[Storage Permissions]
Identity=unix-group:storage
Action=org.freedesktop.udisks.filesystem-mount;org.freedesktop.udisks.drive-eject;org.freedesktop.udisks.drive-detach;org.freedesktop.udisks.luks-unlock;org.freedesktop.udisks.inhibit-polling;org.freedesktop.udisks.drive-set-spindown;org.freedesktop.udisks.filesystem-mount-system-internal
ResultAny=yes
ResultActive=yes
ResultInactive=no
contents of .xinitrc
#!/bin/sh
# ~/.xinitrc
# Executed by startx (run your window manager from here)
if [ -d /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc.d ]; then
for f in /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc.d/*; do
[ -x "$f" ] && . "$f"
done
unset f
fi
# exec gnome-session
# exec startkde
#exec startxfce4
exec startlxde
# ...or the Window Manager of your choice
At /usr/share/polkit-1/actions/org.freedesktop.udisks.policy
I changed <action id="org.freedesktop.udisks.filesystem-mount-system-internal">
mount a system-internal disk at <allow_active> from "auth_admin_keep" to "yes".
Still didn't work!
Either this is a bug or I have a permission problem somewhere.
Can you please advise how to do this or point me to a recent tutorial to be able to auto mount other partitions not using /etc/fstab? Some of the older posts refer to hal or other package that have been deprecated.
Thanks
Edit: latest. It seems that I must mount the desired partition from the terminal. example: $sudo mount /dev/sda5 /mnt
then can edit it from PCMANFM by going to / and then /mnt. Apparently I do not have to manually unmount.
Last edited by linuxloverjerry1 (2012-06-13 04:25:37)

Recovering broken filesystems

Before I ask my question, here's what the setup involved is:
I have one SSD, which holds / and /boot (not LVMed), and one 2TB HDD that held /var, /tmp, swap, and 2 data partitions.I had run out of space, so I bought 2 more 2TB hard drives. I'd planned to make a degraded RAID5 out of them, put an LVM over top of it with partitions matching my existing ones, copy data over, then wipe the original disk and add it to the array.
Now, what happened:
Basically, I wasn't paying as much attention as I should have when I used fdisk. I knew what the 2TB drive's letter was before I added the two new ones, but of course I didn't consider that adding disks would change it. So, I formatted 2 disks, 1 of the new ones plus the old one, with a full-disk partition with the type set to Linux RAID auto-detect. Before I wrote anything else to them, though, I realized I'd reformatted the wrong disk. So, I formatted it back to an LVM partition, and used /etc/lvm/archive to recreate the physical volume. LVM figured it out and was happy.
Here's where it gets a bit weird. Since LVM configurations are backed up before, not after, a new command is run, the last and largest of the partitions wasn't recreated by this. That was fine, though, the guide I was using ( http://insights.oetiker.ch/linux/lvm/ ) noted that, and had a way to restore that last partition. Since the command creating the backup of the configuration is in the backup, I could just run that with an extra flag. Well, that went fine too, I thought. LVM happily restored, everything was good. But, when I tried to get device-mapper to see them, the other 4 showed up in /dev/mapper, but this 5th one failed with an error about being too large for the target.
But, I have (relatively) recent backups of that one, so I didn't concern myself with it. Restoring /var and the other data volume was my primary concern. So, I kept going. But even though LVM knew about them and device-mapper saw them, something was wrong with those partitions, too. I couldn't mount or fsck them. When I tried, I got a bad superblock/bad magic number error. So I tried one of the backup superblock locations. No dice. None of the partitions would work. Dumpe2fs didn't even see the superblocks.
I thought that was especially strange, because no data apart from one mdadm partition's metadata should have been written. They should still be there, and since I'd "successfully" restored the volumes, their filesystems should be intact.
From there I wasn't sure where to go, for a while. Finally, I took a look at the raw partitions. For example, cat /dev/G2/var | less. I could see my data, and in fact I could see text. Text files still show up undamaged. So why weren't things working?
Next I looked at the volumes in hexdump. From here I'm less sure that my approach was right, because I don't know that much about the filesystems, but:
I looked at the working partitions on another, similarly formatted computer (var, tmp, and a data volumes on a HDD, swap on its own non-LVMed partition, and / and /boot on the SSD). For example, comparing the tmp volumes. When I did hexdump -c -v on the working one, it began with:
0000000 \0 \0 \0 \0 \0 \0 \0 \0 \0 \0 \0 \0 \0 \0 \0 \0
0000010 \0 \0 \0 \0 \0 \0 \0 \0 \0 \0 \0 \0 \0 \0 \0 \0
The broken one, however, starts:
0000000 \0 201 \0 \0 \0 201 001 \0 \0 201 002 \0 \0 201 003 \0
0000010 \0 201 004 \0 \0 201 \f \0 \0 201 \r \0 \0 \0 \0 \0
I wasn't sure what was going on there, but when I looked further down in the working one, I saw something that looked similar...
0002000 002 200 \0 \0 002 200 001 \0 002 200 002 \0 002 200 003 \0
0002010 002 200 004 \0 002 200 \f \0 002 200 \r \0 002 200 030 \0
Similar things show up periodically throughout both volumes, so it's definitely filesystem related. Either inodes or superblock backups, right? (As I said, I don't know enough about the FSes to be confident about anything I say here). Either way, it looks like either when the LVM partition was recreated, or when the volumes were restored, things got shifted by some number of bytes from where they originally were.
So, my questions: Am I right? Am I just totally off base here? Is there anything I can do to recover my data?
I've spent the last couple days trying to get things fixed, so at this point even just a fresh pair of eyes on the problem would really help.

Hi, JoshHardman. Welcome to the Nokia Support Discussions! Just to verify, did you create a backup file before this happened? Which files are you very interested in saving or recovering? Your contacts and paid apps are in sync with your Microsoft account while your media files can be synced to your One Drive account, aside from your memory card.
Have you tried to press and hold the volume down and power keys until it vibrates? This should get your phone to reboot and respond properly again.
Let us know the outcome.

I want to mount / partition Read-Only !

I have Arch installed on my Acer Aspire One... and it works great on this little machine!
The Acer One has no hard disk, but uses SSD, so to reduce writes to disk i use EXT2, I have my /home on a separate SD card, and I mounted log and temp directories on tmpfs:
/var/log, /var/tmp, /tmp, /var/cache/pacman/pkg .
now i would like to mount the root partition (/) read only.
the reason is that i want that filesystem (EXT2) to be safe in case of improper power-off or any other disaster ...
this guide for Opensuse shows how to take care of resolv.conf and mtab files (which are, I suppose, the only files that need to be writable, after i moved the log and temp directoryes in tmpfs and the home on SD card)
http://en.opensuse.org/How-To_Make_the_ … _read-only
but then the guide advises to change some configuration files, so that the sistem doesn't remount the root partition read-write after fsck.
unfortunately the files named in the gyuide are related to Suse, and i didn't find them in Arch...:/
In fact i tried to add the "ro" option to the / partition in my /etc/fstab and i rebooted the system, but as root i can still write to the partitions..
Ideas and Info ..?!
THX
xirtyllo

Other post here. http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=65414
Closing

[package upgrade] Can't update udisks due to filesystem conflicts

Hello everybody,
after not updating my box for like two weeks I wanted to update it this morning.
Unfortunately the upgrade process hangs due to several file conflicts within the udisks package.
$ sudo pacman -Syu
:: Synchronizing package databases...
core is up to date
extra is up to date
community is up to date
multilib is up to date
:: Starting full system upgrade...
resolving dependencies...
warning: dependency cycle detected:
warning: lib32-harfbuzz will be installed before its lib32-freetype2 dependency
looking for inter-conflicts...
Packages (143):
...truncating package names for the sake of readibility...
udisks-1.0.5-1 udisks2-2.1.3-1
Total Installed Size: 2778.41 MiB
Net Upgrade Size: 42.67 MiB
:: Proceed with installation? [Y/n] y
(143/143) checking keys in keyring [###############################################] 100%
(143/143) checking package integrity [###############################################] 100%
(143/143) loading package files [###############################################] 100%
(143/143) checking for file conflicts [###############################################] 100%
error: failed to commit transaction (conflicting files)
udisks: /etc/avahi/services/udisks.service exists in filesystem
udisks: /etc/dbus-1/system.d/org.freedesktop.UDisks.conf exists in filesystem
udisks: /usr/bin/udisks exists in filesystem
udisks: /usr/bin/udisks-tcp-bridge exists in filesystem
udisks: /usr/bin/umount.udisks exists in filesystem
udisks: /usr/lib/systemd/system/udisks.service exists in filesystem
udisks: /usr/lib/udev/rules.d/80-udisks.rules exists in filesystem
udisks: /usr/lib/udev/udisks-dm-export exists in filesystem
udisks: /usr/lib/udev/udisks-part-id exists in filesystem
udisks: /usr/lib/udev/udisks-probe-ata-smart exists in filesystem
udisks: /usr/lib/udev/udisks-probe-sas-expander exists in filesystem
udisks: /usr/lib/udisks/udisks-daemon exists in filesystem
udisks: /usr/lib/udisks/udisks-helper-ata-smart-collect exists in filesystem
udisks: /usr/lib/udisks/udisks-helper-ata-smart-selftest exists in filesystem
udisks: /usr/lib/udisks/udisks-helper-change-filesystem-label exists in filesystem
udisks: /usr/lib/udisks/udisks-helper-change-luks-password exists in filesystem
udisks: /usr/lib/udisks/udisks-helper-create-partition exists in filesystem
udisks: /usr/lib/udisks/udisks-helper-create-partition-table exists in filesystem
udisks: /usr/lib/udisks/udisks-helper-delete-partition exists in filesystem
udisks: /usr/lib/udisks/udisks-helper-drive-benchmark exists in filesystem
udisks: /usr/lib/udisks/udisks-helper-drive-detach exists in filesystem
udisks: /usr/lib/udisks/udisks-helper-drive-poll exists in filesystem
udisks: /usr/lib/udisks/udisks-helper-fstab-mounter exists in filesystem
udisks: /usr/lib/udisks/udisks-helper-linux-md-check exists in filesystem
udisks: /usr/lib/udisks/udisks-helper-linux-md-remove-component exists in filesystem
udisks: /usr/lib/udisks/udisks-helper-mdadm-expand exists in filesystem
udisks: /usr/lib/udisks/udisks-helper-mkfs exists in filesystem
udisks: /usr/lib/udisks/udisks-helper-modify-partition exists in filesystem
udisks: /usr/share/bash-completion/completions/udisks-bash-completion.sh exists in filesystem
udisks: /usr/share/dbus-1/interfaces/org.freedesktop.UDisks.Adapter.xml exists in filesystem
udisks: /usr/share/dbus-1/interfaces/org.freedesktop.UDisks.Device.xml exists in filesystem
udisks: /usr/share/dbus-1/interfaces/org.freedesktop.UDisks.Expander.xml exists in filesystem
udisks: /usr/share/dbus-1/interfaces/org.freedesktop.UDisks.Port.xml exists in filesystem
udisks: /usr/share/dbus-1/interfaces/org.freedesktop.UDisks.xml exists in filesystem
udisks: /usr/share/dbus-1/system-services/org.freedesktop.UDisks.service exists in filesystem
udisks: /usr/share/locale/da/LC_MESSAGES/udisks.mo exists in filesystem
udisks: /usr/share/man/man1/udisks-tcp-bridge.1.gz exists in filesystem
udisks: /usr/share/man/man1/udisks.1.gz exists in filesystem
udisks: /usr/share/man/man7/udisks.7.gz exists in filesystem
udisks: /usr/share/man/man8/udisks-daemon.8.gz exists in filesystem
udisks: /usr/share/pkgconfig/udisks.pc exists in filesystem
udisks: /usr/share/polkit-1/actions/org.freedesktop.udisks.policy exists in filesystem
Errors occurred, no packages were upgraded.
Anyone got a clue? I could not find anything on the forums or on the homepage.
Thanks in advance!

Hi DerAlex, welcome to the forums.
Please read the following part of the wiki, which explains how yoou should proceed in this situation: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Pa … stem.22.21
Last edited by WorMzy (2014-03-21 08:49:21)

[SOLVED] "Filesystem check failed" during boot process

I was using XFCE on my netbook recently and clicked "shutdown". It logged out to the command prompt and nothing happened. Assuming that I'd clicked "logout" by mistake, I typed "pacman -Syu" to run an update... And moments later it suddenly started the shutdown process.
Now, whenever I boot up, I see the message below. I tried booting from a GParted CD to check the filesystems for errors, but none were detected.
Can anyone suggest what I might need to do to fix the problem?
rootfs: clean, 11026/246512 files, 477083/984576 blocks
home: clean, 4386/527280 files, 237183/2105344 blocks
/dev/sdb2 is mounted. e2fsck: Cannot continue, aborting.
************* FILESYSTEM CHECK FAILED ************
* Please repair manually and reboot. Note that the root
* file system is currently mounted read-only. To remount
* it read-write type: mount -n -o remount,rw /
* when you exit the maintenance shell the system will
* reboot automatically.
Give root password for maintenance
(or type Control-D to continue):
Last edited by esuhl (2012-03-27 01:20:07)

Thank you all for your replies :-)
hadrons123 wrote:What happens when you do try the suggestion given by it?
I don't exactly know how I should "repair manually"... I thought a filesystem check in GParted would have been enough...
lijpbasin wrote:You can boot the system using a archlinux live cd, and run fsck manually on every linux partition in the old system with options.
DON'T mount any of the filesystems before running fsck, or your data will probably be lost. If you want to check the partition information first, run fdisk -l with root privileges.
Thanks. I tried booting from an ArchBang live CD last night and ran "e2fsck -pcv" on each partition. The check completed, but the problem persists... I just tried again using "fsck" as you suggested and got the following output (but the machine still fails to boot with the same error as before):
fsck from util-linux 2.20.1
e2fsck 1.41.14 (22-Dec-2010)
usr was not cleanly unmounted, check forced.
Pass 1: Checking inodes, blocks, and sizes
Pass 2: Checking directory structure
Pass 3: Checking directory connectivity
Pass 4: Checking reference counts
Pass 5: Checking group summary information
usr: 115811/458752 files (1.7% non-contiguous), 783161/1834496 blocks
Gcool wrote:
/dev/sdb2 is mounted. e2fsck: Cannot continue, aborting.
As mentioned already, the reason it's failing is because the /dev/sdb2 partition is mounted before it can be fsck'd. What is this partition exactly (which filesystem, what's on it, mountpoint,...)?
I'm not overly familiar with the Linux boot process, but why would it suddenly be mounting this partition before fsck-ing it? Even if it was mounted when the netbook shutdown, surely the boot process starts with all partitions unmounted...? Anyway, the partition details from /etc/fstab are below.
<file system> <dir> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
tmpfs /tmp tmpfs nodev,nosuid 0 0
/dev/sda1 / ext2 defaults,noatime 0 1
/dev/sdb1 /home ext2 defaults,noatime,user_xattr 0 1
/dev/sdb2 /usr ext2 defaults,noatime 0 1
I'm (now) aware that mounting /usr as a separate partition is a bad idea and (having read the "Error when booting with the new initscripts" thread), I have told pacman to ignore updates to the initscripts package (until I figure out how best to work round or fix that issue).
Shark wrote:Write umount /dev/sdb2 in konsole or unmount partition in gparted by right click on problematic partition and click unmount. Than proced.
If I type "umount /dev/sdb2" at the prompt, I get the following error:
umount: /usr: device is busy.
(In some cases useful info about processes that use
the device is found by lsof(8) or fuser(1))
I tried "umount -l /dev/sdb2" to unmount when the device becomes free... but it never does.
I also booted into GParted, but there is no option to "unmount" /dev/sdb2. There is a "mount" option in the menu, but it is greyed out. If I open a terminal window from the GParted Live environment and type "sudo umount /dev/sdb2" I get the following message:
umount: /dev/sdb2: not mounted
DSpider wrote:Are you mounting the root drive with "ro" (read only) in fstab?
No (as shown above). I don't *think* I've messed anything up with fstab or any other config files -- everything was working perfectly till the netbook shutdown whilst pacman was running.

[Solved] latest filesystem upgrade failed

During last system upgrade ( pacman -Syu )，when upgrading filesystem-2011.08-1,
the system hang for a while, then pacman exit with some segfault error
I tried to fix it by typing ` pacman -Syu ` again, then got another error when upgrading linux-3.0.2-1
ERROR: file not found: `/etc/modprobe.d/usb-load-ehci-first.conf'
and filesystem is not in the upgrade package list, so I tried
sudo pacman -S filesystem
but I got some file confilct error
warning: filesystem-2011.08-1 is up to date -- reinstalling
resolving dependencies...
looking for inter-conflicts...
error: could not open file /var/lib/pacman/local/filesystem-2011.08-1/desc: No such file or directory
error: could not open file /var/lib/pacman/local/filesystem-2011.08-1/desc: No such file or directory
error: could not open file /var/lib/pacman/local/filesystem-2011.08-1/desc: No such file or directory
error: could not open file /var/lib/pacman/local/filesystem-2011.08-1/desc: No such file or directory
error: could not open file /var/lib/pacman/local/filesystem-2011.08-1/desc: No such file or directory
error: could not open file /var/lib/pacman/local/filesystem-2011.08-1/desc: No such file or directory
error: could not open file /var/lib/pacman/local/filesystem-2011.08-1/desc: No such file or directory
error: could not open file /var/lib/pacman/local/filesystem-2011.08-1/desc: No such file or directory
error: could not open file /var/lib/pacman/local/filesystem-2011.08-1/desc: No such file or directory
error: could not open file /var/lib/pacman/local/filesystem-2011.08-1/desc: No such file or directory
error: could not open file /var/lib/pacman/local/filesystem-2011.08-1/desc: No such file or directory
error: could not open file /var/lib/pacman/local/filesystem-2011.08-1/desc: No such file or directory
error: could not open file /var/lib/pacman/local/filesystem-2011.08-1/desc: No such file or directory
error: could not open file /var/lib/pacman/local/filesystem-2011.08-1/desc: No such file or directory
error: could not open file /var/lib/pacman/local/filesystem-2011.08-1/desc: No such file or directory
error: could not open file /var/lib/pacman/local/filesystem-2011.08-1/desc: No such file or directory
error: could not open file /var/lib/pacman/local/filesystem-2011.08-1/desc: No such file or directory
error: could not open file /var/lib/pacman/local/filesystem-2011.08-1/desc: No such file or directory
error: could not open file /var/lib/pacman/local/filesystem-2011.08-1/desc: No such file or directory
error: could not open file /var/lib/pacman/local/filesystem-2011.08-1/desc: No such file or directory
error: could not open file /var/lib/pacman/local/filesystem-2011.08-1/desc: No such file or directory
Targets (1): filesystem-2011.08-1
Total Download Size: 0.00 MB
Total Installed Size: 0.06 MB
checking package integrity...
checking for file conflicts...
error: could not open file /var/lib/pacman/local/filesystem-2011.08-1/files: No such file or directory
error: could not open file /var/lib/pacman/local/filesystem-2011.08-1/files: No such file or directory
error: could not open file /var/lib/pacman/local/filesystem-2011.08-1/files: No such file or directory
error: could not open file /var/lib/pacman/local/filesystem-2011.08-1/files: No such file or directory
error: could not open file /var/lib/pacman/local/filesystem-2011.08-1/files: No such file or directory
error: could not open file /var/lib/pacman/local/filesystem-2011.08-1/files: No such file or directory
filesystem: /etc/crypttab exists in filesystem
filesystem: /etc/fstab exists in filesystem
filesystem: /etc/group exists in filesystem
filesystem: /etc/gshadow exists in filesystem
filesystem: /etc/host.conf exists in filesystem
filesystem: /etc/hosts exists in filesystem
filesystem: /etc/issue exists in filesystem
filesystem: /etc/ld.so.conf exists in filesystem
filesystem: /etc/motd exists in filesystem
filesystem: /etc/nsswitch.conf exists in filesystem
filesystem: /etc/passwd exists in filesystem
filesystem: /etc/profile exists in filesystem
filesystem: /etc/resolv.conf exists in filesystem
filesystem: /etc/securetty exists in filesystem
filesystem: /etc/shadow exists in filesystem
filesystem: /etc/shells exists in filesystem
Errors occurred, no packages were upgraded.
after search the forum, I found a post last year
https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?pid=833711
I only have the file " install " in /var/lib/pacman/local/filesystem-2011.08-1/
ls -l /var/lib/pacman/local/filesystem-2011.08-1/
total 4.0K
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1.6K Aug 10 07:41 install
I checked another machine which also installed Arch Linux,
it's package number is filesystem-2011.04-1
ls -l /var/lib/pacman/local/filesystem-2011.04-1/
total 12
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 287 Jul 23 12:49 desc
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1804 Jul 23 12:23 files
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1623 Apr 8 18:08 install
Should I just copy the " desc " and " files " to my computer, then run `pacman -Syu` again
or
Upgrade that machine's filesystem to 2011.08-1, then copy the files to my computer to fix it ?
( I am afraid of upgrade error again)
Thank you
Last edited by lefthaha (2011-08-20 16:38:24)

I just upgraded filesystem to 2011.08-1 on my VM
then copyed the " desc, files " under /var/lib/pacman/local/filesystem-2011.08-1/
to my computer, and reinstall filesystem and kernel
$ sudo pacman -S filesystem --dbonly
$ sudo pacman -S filesystem
Running 'pacman -S filesystem'
warning: /etc/fstab installed as /etc/fstab.pacnew
warning: /etc/group installed as /etc/group.pacnew
warning: /etc/hosts installed as /etc/hosts.pacnew
warning: /etc/passwd installed as /etc/passwd.pacnew
warning: /etc/resolv.conf installed as /etc/resolv.conf.pacnew
warning: /etc/shells installed as /etc/shells.pacnew
warning: /etc/gshadow installed as /etc/gshadow.pacnew
warning: /etc/shadow installed as /etc/shadow.pacnew
upgraded filesystem (2011.08-1 -> 2011.08-1)
$ sudo pacman -S linux
after edited /etc/fstab, reboot the computer
During booting I got some filesystem error warning
system automaticlly checked and fixed those errors on root partition and reboot again
Then I can boot into X now
in /var/log/error.log I found something similar to previous booting error
Aug 19 20:39:42 MyHost kernel: [473315.923933] ata1.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x0 action 0x0
Aug 19 20:39:42 MyHost kernel: [473315.923939] ata1.00: BMDMA stat 0x65
Aug 19 20:39:42 MyHost kernel: [473315.923944] ata1.00: failed command: READ DMA EXT
Aug 19 20:39:42 MyHost kernel: [473315.923954] ata1.00: cmd 25/00:00:6f:20:bd/00:04:00:00:00/e0 tag 0 dma 524288 in
Aug 19 20:39:42 MyHost kernel: [473315.923955] res 51/40:00:d2:23:bd/40:00:00:00:00/e0 Emask 0x9 (media error)
Aug 19 20:39:42 MyHost kernel: [473315.923960] ata1.00: status: { DRDY ERR }
Aug 19 20:39:42 MyHost kernel: [473315.923963] ata1.00: error: { UNC }
Aug 19 20:40:13 MyHost kernel: [473321.025032] ata1.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x0 action 0x0
Aug 19 20:40:13 MyHost kernel: [473321.025038] ata1.00: BMDMA stat 0x65
Aug 19 20:40:13 MyHost kernel: [473321.025044] ata1.00: failed command: READ DMA EXT
Aug 19 20:40:13 MyHost kernel: [473321.025053] ata1.00: cmd 25/00:00:6f:20:bd/00:04:00:00:00/e0 tag 0 dma 524288 in
Aug 19 20:40:13 MyHost kernel: [473321.025055] res 51/40:00:d2:23:bd/40:00:00:00:00/e0 Emask 0x9 (media error)
Aug 19 20:40:13 MyHost kernel: [473321.025059] ata1.00: status: { DRDY ERR }
Aug 19 20:40:13 MyHost kernel: [473321.025062] ata1.00: error: { UNC }
Aug 19 20:40:13 MyHost kernel: [473328.558325] ata1.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x0 action 0x0
Aug 19 20:40:13 MyHost kernel: [473328.558331] ata1.00: BMDMA stat 0x65
Aug 19 20:40:13 MyHost kernel: [473328.558337] ata1.00: failed command: READ DMA EXT
Aug 19 20:40:13 MyHost kernel: [473328.558346] ata1.00: cmd 25/00:00:6f:20:bd/00:04:00:00:00/e0 tag 0 dma 524288 in
Aug 19 20:40:13 MyHost kernel: [473328.558348] res 51/40:00:d2:23:bd/40:00:00:00:00/e0 Emask 0x9 (media error)
Aug 19 20:40:13 MyHost kernel: [473328.558352] ata1.00: status: { DRDY ERR }
Aug 19 20:40:13 MyHost kernel: [473328.558355] ata1.00: error: { UNC }
Aug 19 20:40:13 MyHost kernel: [473333.355772] ata1.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x0 action 0x0
Aug 19 20:40:13 MyHost kernel: [473333.355779] ata1.00: BMDMA stat 0x65
Aug 19 20:40:13 MyHost kernel: [473333.355784] ata1.00: failed command: READ DMA EXT
Aug 19 20:40:13 MyHost kernel: [473333.355794] ata1.00: cmd 25/00:00:6f:20:bd/00:04:00:00:00/e0 tag 0 dma 524288 in
Aug 19 20:40:13 MyHost kernel: [473333.355796] res 51/40:00:d2:23:bd/40:00:00:00:00/e0 Emask 0x9 (media error)
Aug 19 20:40:13 MyHost kernel: [473333.355800] ata1.00: status: { DRDY ERR }
Aug 19 20:40:13 MyHost kernel: [473333.355802] ata1.00: error: { UNC }
Aug 19 20:40:13 MyHost kernel: [473338.984884] ata1.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x0 action 0x0
Aug 19 20:40:13 MyHost kernel: [473338.984891] ata1.00: BMDMA stat 0x65
Aug 19 20:40:13 MyHost kernel: [473338.984896] ata1.00: failed command: READ DMA EXT
Aug 19 20:40:13 MyHost kernel: [473338.984905] ata1.00: cmd 25/00:00:6f:20:bd/00:04:00:00:00/e0 tag 0 dma 524288 in
Aug 19 20:40:13 MyHost kernel: [473338.984907] res 51/40:00:d2:23:bd/40:00:00:00:00/e0 Emask 0x9 (media error)
Aug 19 20:40:13 MyHost kernel: [473338.984911] ata1.00: status: { DRDY ERR }
Aug 19 20:40:13 MyHost kernel: [473338.984914] ata1.00: error: { UNC }
Aug 19 20:40:13 MyHost kernel: [473345.947035] ata1.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x0 action 0x0
Aug 19 20:40:13 MyHost kernel: [473345.947042] ata1.00: BMDMA stat 0x65
Aug 19 20:40:13 MyHost kernel: [473345.947047] ata1.00: failed command: READ DMA EXT
Aug 19 20:40:13 MyHost kernel: [473345.947056] ata1.00: cmd 25/00:00:6f:20:bd/00:04:00:00:00/e0 tag 0 dma 524288 in
Aug 19 20:40:13 MyHost kernel: [473345.947058] res 51/40:00:d2:23:bd/40:00:00:00:00/e0 Emask 0x9 (media error)
Aug 19 20:40:13 MyHost kernel: [473345.947062] ata1.00: status: { DRDY ERR }
Aug 19 20:40:13 MyHost kernel: [473345.947065] ata1.00: error: { UNC }
Aug 19 20:40:13 MyHost kernel: [473345.980986] end_request: I/O error, dev sda, sector 12395474
after searching on the web, I found that maybe an old harmless problem related to kernel ?
https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?pid=293179
also found an error in /var/log/daemon.log
Failed to activate service 'org.freedesktop.Avahi': timed out
there is already a post about it, but not having a conclusion yet
https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=124485
Every things seen to work fine now
After few more test and reboot, I would mark this post [solved]
Thanks to everyone for replying m(_ _)m
P.S.
There is still a problem when using virtualbox 4.1.2-1 after reboot, but I think that may not related to this post
If I try to upgrade kernel of the VM to 3.0.2-1 ( currently 3.0.1-1 ), will cause VirtualBox and my computer crash
generating some assert error, produce segfault when I tried to type any command in shell
unable to launch any program in X, but if I switch to tty*, I only got
INIT:Id "x" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes
So I have to push the reset button to force reboot
after restore VM to previous snapshot, not having any problem so far

Filesystem check failing; can't enter maintenance shell. [SOLVED]

Originally, arch wouldn't let me log in, complaining of an incorrect shell entry. (This is a recently re-setup system of mine, so I only have a root account.)
So I booted into the LiveCD, mounted my root partition, and editted /etc/passwd so that it pointed to the correct zsh path. But I rebooted without thinking, and without unmount. DOH!
Now Im getting the "FILESYSTEM CHECK FAILED: Please repair manually and reboot" error on boot, constantly. I've gone into the Live environemt again, and fsck the partition - didn't help.
Ideas? I've seen a recent topic similar to this one, but couldn't find help in it.
Last edited by pritchard92 (2009-09-28 21:49:34)

Thank you for the reply.
However, after many more reboots, it finally checked the disk, and is now working.
Thanks.

Disk order changes, grub problem, filesystem check failed

I'm having some problems installing Archlinux onto a machine with a lot of SATA drives, some connected by SATA cards. I have tried the 2009-08 netinstaller burned to CD, both -x86_64.iso and -x86_64-isolinux.iso, and I have the same problem with both.
I am installing from a USB-connect optical drive to an Intel X25-M 80GB SSD connected to a motherboard SATA port. I also have 2 HDDs connected to motherboard SATA ports, and 4 more HDDs connected to 4 SIL-based PCIe SATA cards. Additionally, I have a 4GB Patriot USB flash drive connected to a motherboard USB port. None of the HDDs have a bootable MBR, I am planning to create an mdadm RAID with the HDDs, but the USB flash drive is bootable. The motherboard is an Asus Z8PE-D18 with the latest BIOS, in AHCI mode.
First thing to note is that I was able to successfully install Fedora 12 linux to this machine in the exact configuration that I am trying to install Archlinux. I just installed Fedora 12 again last night, and it installed and loaded fine when I rebooted from the SSD.
So, the problems I am having with Archlinux. During install, I found that the SSD is showing up as either /dev/sde or /dev/sdf. This is odd since it was /dev/sda with Fedora. It makes sense for it to be /dev/sda, since it is on the first motherboard SATA port. But I proceeded with the Archlinux install, and grub seemed to detect the stage1 location properly -- root was set to (hda4,0) or (hda5,0) depending on whether the SSD was at sde or sdf. The kernel root was configured by UUID, so that does not depend on the drive order. Okay so far.
The problem shows up on reboot. The bootloader immediately complains that there is no such partition sde1 or sdf1. I drop into a grub command line and do
find /boot/grub/stage1
and it replies with (hd0,0), so I modify the boot line to root (hd0,0) and boot. Now it gets pretty far. Lots of boot messages scroll by. Here are some of the last few before the problem:
Waiting 10 seconds for device /dev/disk/by-uuid/22a35aa2-9799-4575-b1eb-456e819a1a26 ...
kjournald starting. Commit interval 5 seconds
EXT3-fs (sde1): mounted filesystem with writeback data mode
INIT: version 2.86 booting
::Starting UDev DAemon
::Triggering UDev uevents
::Loading Modules
::Waiting for UDev uevents to be processed
::Bringing up loopback interface
::Mounting Root Read-only
::Checking Filesystems
/dev/sdf1:
The superblock could not be read or does not describe a correct ext2
filesystem. If the device is valid and it really contains an ext2
filesystem (and not swap or ufs or something else), then the superblock
is corrupt, and you might try running e2fsck with an alternate superblock
**** FILESYSTEM CHECK FAILED
* Please repair manually and reboot. Note that the root file system
* is currently mounted read-only....
Give root password for maintenance
So I logged in as root and did an fdisk -l. The boot SSD was at /dev/sde. The menu.lst has root as (hd5,0), which would be sdf (which was correct during installation, but the disk order apparently changed). The kernel root= in menu.lst used by-uuid, and it at least points to the correct drive, which I suppose is why I was able to boot as far as I did, but when it tries to mount the root filesystem, it fails as shown above.
So, at initial grub boot, the grub stage1 is found at (hd0,0). During installation, the SSD was sdf, but after booting the kernel, the SSD is sde. What is going on?
One other experiment is that I pulled all the drives (including USB flash drive) except the SSD. The HDDs are in hot-swap slots, so that was easy. The PCIe SATA cards are still plugged into the PCIe slots. Then I was able to successfully install and boot Archlinux. But when I plugged the drives back in and rebooted, I had the same problem as detailed above.
Any suggestions on how to fix this?

I had the same problem.
Last week I installed Arch onto a new SATA HD. I wanted to make sure the installation worked before I attached the other drives. On booting with the other drives attached, similar messages.
My solution:
Login as root.
Follow the instruction to mount / as read-write so you can make changes to the filesystem.
edit /etc/fstab and eliminate the references to /dev/sdxx and replace them with UUIDs or labels (as suggested above) as these won't change.
in /etc/fstab ...
# external data sources
#data /dev/sdb6
UUID=931d7107-1241-4d82-ad28-fcbe7af8ba69 /data ext3 defaults 0 0
#Documents /dev/sda9
/dev/disk/by-label/Documents /data/Documents ext3 defaults 0 0
Reboot and you should be good.
You can find the UUID of the drives by using
$ blkid
or you can set a drive label with e2label, assuming you are using ext2,3 or 4
Good luck.

Mounting partitions

hi there
i have several partitions, windows, backups,etc...
i want to mount them! :-)
once i had one of my partitions to be mounted on startup by editing the fstab
then i added some other partition the same way , which worked fine, but then i get messages like "permission denied" as a normal user even if i want to browse the first partition i added which worked befor!
ok after trying and trying and geting more and more different error messages i added my partitions in fstab like the preconfigured floppy is in ;-)
(but with correct filesystems, not all vfat)
then i tryed following code with that customized fstab and with original fstab (addedlines=comments)
[matto@hansa matto]$ mount -t vfat /dev/discs/disc0/part8 /mnt/mukku
mount: only root can do that
[matto@hansa matto]$
now i think i have to give my user "matto" rights to mount partition
i also just used the option "user" in fstab and i get permission denied errors....
with option "defaults" its not getting better... but why? i can browse "/" to as user, ok not all subdirectories :-) but i am "on" "/"
i am really confused and frustrated now , because now i can't even reach my recordings partition which i could reach befor :-/
btw is there any good and easy to use multitrack recording software for linux?
greetings matto

Alternative is to use other tools for ntfs. Take a look at these threads:
http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php? … light=ntfs
http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php? … light=ntfs
http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php? … light=ntfs
but I have no idea if this works and if it's safe. It's much better option to use fat32 partition for windows-linux data exchange.
BTW if you use windows to create fat32 partitions it can create maximum 32gb fat32 partitions. You will have to create additional fat32 partitions if you have more space to share with linux (the funny thing is that windows says it can read/write to/from bigger fat32 partitions without a problem but it's just a limit on creation of such partitions :-)).

Partitions / Filesystems / Bootloaders etc

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