Re: Debian 1.1: fsck failure.

["Susan G. Kleinmann" <sgk@sgk.tiac.net>]

Hi Oz --

You said:
> After a power failure. I cannot fsck one of my IDE partition
> when I type:
> fsck /dev/hda8
> 
> I get:
> -- Parallelizing fsck version 1.02 (16-Jan-96)
> e2fsck 1.02, 16-Jan-96 for EXT2 FS 0.5b, 95/08/09
> fsck.ext2: Attempt to read block from filesystem resulted in short read
>  while trying to open /dev/hda8
> Could this be a zero-length partition?
> Is there any way to salvage this partition?
> Do I need to reformat this partition?

It's risky to offer anyone advice on repairing their disk, but here goes:
Boot up your system in single user mode (at the boot prompt, 
type "linux single"). 

Run fsck manually on the sick drive (fsck /dev/hda8).
Now you can either say 'y' when prompted, or 'n'.  If you choose 'n',
you obviously have to find some other way to fix the problem.  If you 
choose 'y', fsck may change your file system in a way that leads to lost
files.  

Run fsck a second time; this way it can correct any errors that might
have been left dangling from the first run.

Then (this is on the advice of Sherwood Botsford) execute
reboot -n
He said:
'The -n is critical -- when you finish the fsck, the state of the
 disk and the state of the kernel image of the disk are NOT the same
 and the disk image is the right one. -n says, "Don't write out
 the kernel image of what the disk is..." '

HTH,
Susan Kleinmann