I have to keep running fsck

Huw · 13 Jan 2012 at 14:33

Every now and again my Sabayon system fails to boot and I get a message about having to run fsck manually on my / partition (separate from /boot and /home). Unfortunately I can't find the relevant logs in /var/log so I can't paste the error messages.

However if I do as I'm told, log in as root, and run fsck, it seems to repair a few inode-type errors and asks me to reboot. I do, and all seems well again - until next time.

It probably happens about once every dozen boots. Besides the irritation, should I be worried my disk is failing? It's always the same partition.

SMN · 13 Jan 2012 at 17:31

Sounds like a disk error mate to be honest with you. What file system is it? Got the output of /etc/fstab? If i were you i'd use smartctl and check the SMART stats for the drive, reckon you've got some sector allocation issues.

Huw · 13 Jan 2012 at 19:35

Balls. Alright, will do, as soon as I get control of the PC back (made the mistake of introducing my daughter to Minecraft).

Essexraptor · 14 Jan 2012 at 01:10

NO! not Minecraft !!!!

SMN · 14 Jan 2012 at 13:00

Maybe this is a new breed of intelligent hard drives that detects when it should self-destruct

Huw · 15 Jan 2012 at 00:48

SMN said:
What file system is it? Got the output of /etc/fstab?

It's ext4:

Code:

#
# /etc/fstab
# Created by anaconda on Thu Nov 10 21:20:49 2011
#
# Accessible filesystems, by reference, are maintained under '/dev/disk'
# See man pages fstab(5), findfs(8), mount(8) and/or blkid(8) for more info
#
UUID=97a65587-d7a5-42fa-8381-13c19b6af778 /                       ext4    defaults        1 1
UUID=88353122-d7ca-4426-98d4-23c23d518792 /boot                   ext2    defaults        1 2
UUID=bb7b2f51-8c10-4d74-b730-8b6087264fa2 /home                   ext4    defaults        1 2
UUID=52ee4dd5-ad3b-42d7-b60d-76a1c49c9ad5 swap                    swap    defaults        0 0
tmpfs                   /dev/shm                tmpfs   defaults        0 0
devpts                  /dev/pts                devpts  gid=5,mode=620  0 0
sysfs                   /sys                    sysfs   defaults        0 0
proc                    /proc                   proc    defaults        0 0

Subliminal Aura · 20 Jan 2012 at 23:04

hdparm -i 0 /dev/[your partition]
hdparm -t 0 /dev/[your partition]

Never have an fsck again (unless it seriously needs it)

Huw · 20 Jan 2012 at 23:19

Thanks. It hasn't done it since I had a RAGE at Sabayon and put OpenSUSE on instead, but I'll bear that one in mind if it ever recurs.

Perhaps Sabayon was being a knob.