Douglas A. Tutty wrote:
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.
Isn't this a bit of a security breach? Anyone booting my laptop would have potential access to my files. Would a person using this shell have root privileges?
I suppose I could just use a Knoppix CD to edit the line only when needed.
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.
So at that point I run fsck, right?
Am I therefore risking the system files but saving the data if I data=journal?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.
It's Sarge. I'm in a busy time of year and don't have time to upgrade yet.Well, ideally, the system should be stable enough not to need a reboot. If this is Etch, check for bug reports.
I don't think it updates. Knoppix is based on Debian, but is really not meant for use on other than a CD or DVD. I installed it long ago to check out some unstable features and just have never gotten rid of it.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.
Installed smartmontools today. Thanks for the advice. postid