[Solved -sorta] systemd-fsck []: fsck: /sbin/fsck.ext4: execute failed

Question

Greetings.
I am getting the following on boot:
Starting Version 218
A password is required to access the MyStorage volume:
Enter passphrase for /dev/sda3
/dev/mapper/MyStorage-rootvol: clean, 210151/983040 files, 2284613/3932160 block
[ 78.084720] systemd-fsck [280]: fsck: /sbin/fsck.ext4: execute failed: Exec format error
[ 78.085215] systemd-fsck [287]: fsck: /sbin/fsck.ext2: execute failed: Exec format error
I then end up at a login prompt but if I try to login, I get “Login incorrect”. Sometimes Getty will stop and restart on tty1. Then I get returned to the login prompt.
This came about after upgrading with Pacman (which included “upgraded e2fsprogs (1.42.12-1 -> 1.42.12-2)”) a few days ago. Pacman completed successfully but on reboot the system froze forcing a hard reset.
I've booted to a USB and run fsck on the boot partition (the only ext2 partition). Ditto on the root and home volumes. All fine. I've also mounted all three and can access the data.
I would have thought it was something to do with the e2fs upgrade but it obviously scanned the root volume fine and I haven't been able to find any similar reports online.
I've searched online for ideas and I've also searched for logs which might give me some indication of what the cause is but at this point, I've reached my limits.
I'd just nuke the data and start again but I really want to understand what happened here.
Any thoughts on what caused this or suggestions on how to proceed?
Thank you.
Stephen
Last edited by FixedWing (2015-03-16 01:40:20)

Answer 1

Head_on_a_Stick wrote:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Pa … ond_repair
However, it may be simplest to just re-install in your case -- it depends whether you want to use the troubleshooting & repairing as a learning process or if you just want your system up & running again ASAP...
All fixed and working just like nothing happened.
I did use the advice at the referred link plus a few others on archlinux.org and elsewhere. Yes, an absolutely wonderful learning experience!
I manually reinstalled e2fsprogs. That got Pacman working again and I was able to boot into the system. Then I used Pacman to reinstall e2fsprogs properly plus the other seven packages which were also installed during the same Pacman session despite their being corrupted.
What I really don't get is how Pacman could accept a package with 0 bytes and install it? How could such a package possible pass the security check? When I reinstalled the packages, Pacman of course refused to install the corrupt packages in the cache and deleted them. So why didn't that happen initially? I can only think that a corrupt file in that process terminated prematurely and that Pacman wasn't robust enough to detect this so simply continued on, now skipping the scans and installing the corrupt packages. So just to be sure it wasn't a corrupt file in Pacman itself, I also forced a reinstall of that package as well. I've upgraded packages since without issue so I have to assume that whatever the issue was is now gone.
Anyway, thanx for the help!
Stephen