Re: What causes bad inodes?
On Sun, Mar 09, 2008 at 07:57:03PM +0000, postid wrote:
> Douglas A. Tutty wrote:
> >On Sun, Mar 09, 2008 at 03:59:45PM +0000, postid wrote:
> >The magic keystrokes just sync the disks, they do not unmount the
> >filesystems. Thus, things can become corrupted. If it were me, after
> >such a reboot, I'd come up in init=/bin/sh and run fsck manually.
> >
> Please pardon my ignorance here, but what do you mean by "come up
> in init=/bin/sh"?
Edit the kernel command line, add init=/bin/sh
When the kernel boots, instead of runing /bin/init, it will run /bin/sh
and give you a shell, no password required. No initscripts will have
run so only the root fs will be mounted ro, the other filesystems will
not be mounted at all. This is one reason why its good to have separate
filesystems. Keeps the / fs small and unlikely to be corrupted.
>
> >Ideally, you'd use ext3 with data=journal. That way, syncing the disks
> >will get the data _somewhere_ on the disk so that replaying the journal
> >in a normal boot fsck would set things right.
> >
> Again, my apologies, this time for not supplying more complete
> info. I'm using ext3, running Sarge on an IBM R40 laptop along
> with Knoppix (hd install) and WinXP (for encrypted DVDs.
I've never used Knoppix so I don't know what mode they use for ext3.
Debian by default only journals metadata not your actual data. Its
supposed to guarantee that the filesystem stays consistant in the event
of an unclean shutdown but your data is at risk. data=journal means
that your data is journaled as well. See the man pages.
> >Well, ideally, the system should be stable enough not to need a reboot.
> >If this is Etch, check for bug reports.
Can you update a Knoppix hd-install or do you just reinstall a newer
knoppix?
> >
> >If the hard drive is dying, there should be some errors in
> >/var/log/syslog. Also, install smartmontools so that you can check the
> >S.M.A.R.T. data on the drives. If smart tells you that the drive is
> >failing then believe it. If it tells you that everything is fine, take
> >it with a grain of salt. Always have good backups.
> >
> >Doug.
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