[plug] how to fix unclean dismount :)

[bk at bofh.ns.ca]

> dynamix at wanet.com.au wrote:
> > 
> > The Power tripped out yesterday and when it came back and i booted again
> > i got as far as mounting the ext filesystem...
> > it halted coz it want unmounted cleanly...
> > it would go no further...
> > no response.

Did it even get past the fsck? if not, the boot init.d script should have
taken care of the problem. In debian, if it couldn't fsck it, it would
force me to logon as root and do it.

Also, does the hd light turn on or nothing?

> > i booted with a  boot disk and rescue could not even get a
> > console...nothing ...zip...

Must be a stuffed rescue disk. Make sure you have 3, 5 or even 10 rescue
disks, just in case.
> > i ended up doing an upgrade install....nope ..no dice stopped in the
> > same spot..

> > i ended up deleting my partitions and reinstalling from scratch....

In my situation, the io card or the graphics card lost contact with the
VESA slot and I ended up with a corrupted file system. I lost the same
files and directories when I did defrag. I even did a backup (tar) before
deciding it's okay. After 3 or so reboots, corrupted files. Luckily, with
my collection of rescue disks (grr, diff versions of kerenl and libc)
helped me to set up my network and ftp the tarballs. After giving up on a
corrupted file system, I reinstalled, retaining my "old" files *thew*

> > my question is what the hell should i have done?
If you had enough experience, you would have done the same as I did or
close enough, heh. It's not worth losing the files on your drive unless it
is of no value to you. ie: you've configured it to your personal needs. It
took me approximately a week to get my box up and running close to before
the incident.

-David.