/ suddenly Read-only

[jonathan ferguson <jdpf@edumetrics.org>]

hi.

For mysterious reasons a Dual-boot (Windows/Linux) Toshiba 5105-s901 
running Debian/GNU 3.1 Sarge 2.6.8  (with updates) suddenly fails to 
mount read-write the root partition during boot. For about 3 months 
*after* i had installed a new Toshiba 100GiB drive, the system has 
worked beautifully. The system is not partitioned in my traditional / 
/usr /var /home /tmp scenario, and instead uses one ext3 file system 
for / /usr /var /tmp, and another partition for /home. Manual fsck -fv 
/dev/hdXN of the root partition shows the drive to be "perfectly 
healthy." Booting from KNOPPIX, blasting /etc/mtab experimentally, and 
fsck'ing reveals nothing.

The fstab looks good to me, and has not been changed since i installed 
the new hard drive. I did install autofs and configured it to watch 
over /mnt. Nothing can write to the drive, and thusly, diagnostic 
information is available only while booting. A great many startup 
scripts exit on the error: "Read-only file system."

Any ideas on what to do to fix?

i'm stymied.

have a nice day.yad
jdpf