[TriLUG] How to prevent? "fsck died with exit status 4"

[Joseph Mack NA3T]

On Sun, 28 Sep 2014, Jeremy Davis wrote:

> Hey folks, I've been having problems with AV Linux, which is Debian based
> and has been tuned for low latency while recording music.
>
> I have installed it on a couple different computers and every so often, the
> system takes a crap and I have to reinstall. It seems to happen if the
> computer is suddenly unplugged or the power goes out. It seems like I read
> that this happens when logged in as super user and the system is shut down
> with out time to close all the processes.
>
> I get a black screen with "fsck died with exit status 4"

I have no idea, and google doesn't find anything sensible either, so I'm going 
to run through some standard sanity stuff.

o I assume the fsck error is on bootup, not shutdown

o use a journalling filesystem (doesn't help your immediate problem, but is a 
good idea)

o run smartclt -t long /dev/sd? once a week and look at the logs

o the error message is unhelpful. It should tell you the problem and then give 
you the option of running fsck manually. Get a systemrescue cd and run fsck 
manually on the disk.

http://www.sysresccd.org/SystemRescueCd_Homepage

o the sudden crashes sound like a hardware problem. It could be anywhere. Start 
with the disk. Back it up. From the systemrescue cd, mount an external flash 
drive and run

badblocks -svw /dev/your_suspect_disk -o /usb_mount_point/badblocks.out

This may take a couple of days

run the smartctl  test above.

If this finds no errors, you're going to have to look for hardware problems 
elsewhere.

restore your backup

> I am curious how others on the list cope with this issue, such as
> strategies to prevent this from happening, minimize losses, quick recovery
> etc... I am working with music recordings so it is critical not to lose my
> work, which is stored in files on the hard drive.

you do have duplicate copies of everything? Any file on only one disk is 
guaranteed of being lost. When you're doing your recording, do you save to an 
external disk as well? You should save anytime you've accumulated enough work, 
that you wouldn't want to have to recreate it.

Joe

-- 
Joseph Mack NA3T EME(B,D), FM05lw North Carolina
jmack (at) wm7d (dot) net - azimuthal equidistant map
generator at http://www.wm7d.net/azproj.shtml
Homepage http://www.austintek.com/ It's GNU/Linux!