on Wed, Jan 04, 2006 at 04:46:04PM -0700, jonathan ferguson (jdpf@edumetrics.org) wrote:
> 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.
This can indicate a problem with the filesystem is throwing errors.
Your root filesystem is typically mounted with an 'errors=remount-ro'
option, meaning the drive is remounted read-only if an error occurs.
The other possibility is that it's never getting remounted writeable
during the boot process, when running /etc/init.d/checkroot.sh, also
often because of filesystem issues.
Check your system logs and/or 'dmesg' output for any errors.
> 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.
OK.
Watch your boot process carefully. Try booting single user ('single' at
your GRUB/LILO prompt, after the kernel spec) and manually go to
multiuser mode (just exit the admin shell).
> 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."
Triple-check your autofs config. If that's the change, try disabling it
and seeing if the problem disappears.
Peace.
--
Karsten M. Self <kmself@ix.netcom.com> http://kmself.home.netcom.com/
What Part of "Gestalt" don't you understand?
If you ever wanted to know what a person with acute paranoia looks like,
just keep watching.
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