[TriLUG] filesystem error on upgrade to RH 7.2

Richard O. Hammer ROHammer at earthlink.net
Sat Mar 23 21:37:57 EST 2002


I am still embroiled with my filesystem error, which keeps me
from booting normally after upgrading from RedHat 7.0 to 7.2.

In case you didn't get what my problem is (in this thread on
Thursday) the symptom appears on booting.  After it starts to
check the root filesystem, it prints a stack trace and says:
        *** An error occurred during the file system check.
        *** Dropping you to a shell: the system will reboot 
        *** when you leave the shell.
        Give root password for maintenance
        (or type Control-D for normal startup):

After entering my password I get this prompt:

        (Repair Filesystem) 1 #


I've tried and eliminated a few possibilities.

For one, I've tried a fresh install of 7.2 (not just an
upgrade) on newly created and formatted partitions (leaving
two other OSs, Windows and Minix, alone in their pre-existing
partitions).  No go, same problem.  (So this does not have
anything to do with an improperly configured swap partition,
or my botched /etc/fstab, as I suspected before.)

I've reinstalled 7.0, over the top of the broken 7.2, and it
works fine once again.  I've upgraded from 7.0 to 7.2 again,
this time keeping the filesystems as ext2 (not going along
with upgrade to ext3).  No go, same problem.  (So this does
not have anything to do with ext2 vs. ext3.)


Tonight I'm poking at it.  My root filesystem is supposed to
be on /dev/hda6.  But I'm getting different results from fsck
when I call it on the root two different ways.

Contrast this:
(Repair Filesystem) 8 # fsck.ext2 /
e2fsck 1.23, 15-Aug-2001 for EXT2 FS 0.5b, 95/08/09
fsck.ext2: Is a directory while trying to open /

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:
     e2fsck -b 8193 <device>

With this:
(Repair Filesystem) 9 # fsck.ext2 /dev/hda6
e2fsck 1.23, 15-Aug-2001 for EXT2 FS 0.5b, 95/08/09
/: clean, 35647/626496 files, 88716/1251054 blocks

Can you help me understand that?  Or anything else here?

Thank you,
Rich Hammer



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