ASUS Eee PC Series

Linux Support
1

Hi, I am new to Linux, my son installed it on my netbook (he swears by it). My problem is that my son is away, it has developed a problem and I haven’t a clue!

On booting, an error message comes up: Busy/dev/sda1 contains a file system with errors, check forced. Unattached inode 595935

It goes no to say: Please repair manually and reboot. Note that the root file system is currently mounted read-only. To remount it read-write type: mount -n -o remount,rw /.

When you exit the maintenance shell the system will reboot automatically.

What is that all about?!?

HELP ME PLEASE :frowning:

2

Hi, “don’t panic!” (yet!)

I’m guessing either you turned it off rather than closing it down using the menus, or it crashed, or it ran out of battery ??

First of all, here is the caveat; your hard disk has suffered “some” corruption, whereas it’s unlikely to affect you, there is a chance something nasty has happened in which case what you do here will be irrelevant.

Linux can be a bit paranoid about taking decisions that might cause loss of data, even when there really is only one option moving forward. If it’s left you in a command shell with the root filesystem mounted read-only (which is what the text you’ve supplied means) what it wants you to do is a manual filesystem check. So, type in the following;

fsck /dev/sda1

It will probably ask you some yes/no questions about fixing stuff, in which case there is no point in saying no, so just respond with yes. When it finishes the process it will tell you the system needs a reboot, so just type “exit” and it should do that for you. If it doesn’t, just power it off and on again - things “should” then boot up cleanly.

Note; the more things it needs to fix, the more chance there is you’ve lost something … expect up to half a dozen Y/N’s to answer, if you see notably more, prepare yourself. If you see a never-ending stream of Y/N questions, you’ve probably had a hard drive crash and you may be pressing Y for quite some time …

3

Many thanks for your support.

The problem is that when it finishes booting, it finishes with, " Give root password for maintenance (or type Control-D to continue:"

However when I try to type, fsck/dev/sda1, nothing appears on the screen, I mean you can’t type anything at all! The only thing that works is control-D to reboot.

Do I have to do anything else to get to a command line to type, fsck/dev/sda1?

:-\

4

Ok, you need to enter your root password, at which you will get the command prompt and will be able to type the fsck command.
(when you enter the password, it will not echo anything back on the screen)

If you don’t have the root password, as Mark says you will need a bootable Linux CD …

5

As MP says when you enter your password you wont see anything being entered on the screen, but it is being entered, this is a security measure so nobody can look over your shoulder… in Windows you would get a series of ****, but that would at least tell people how many letters are in your password.

So just enter your root password and hit the enter key.

If you are using Ubuntu (and you are the only user) the root password will probably be your user password.

I had deleted my previous posting, as it made more sense for you to follow MP’s instructions first… but as he’s mentioned it… here is (roughly) what it said…

What you are going to have to do is… download a LiveCD ISO image and burn it to a CD or DVD, boot from the CD and then run fsck from the command line.

Can you tell us which Linux distribution you’re using (eg. Ubuntu, Mint, Xandros, openSUSE, etc.)?.. the reason I ask is so you’ll feel more at home with the interface… in reality, pretty much any Linux LiveCD will suffice.

If you don’t have a CD/DVD drive, you still need to download the LiveCD ISO image, then use it to create a LiveUSB key, and boot from that.

Obviously you will need access to another PC and either a CD-R or a USB key (aka. pendrive, thumbdrive, memory stick, etc.)

Instructions for creating a LiveUSB key, can be found here:
http://linuxforums.org.uk/general-help-advice/help-!!!!-again/msg20412/#msg20412

The above link says you need access to a Windows PC… you can create one from a Linux PC, but I would need to know which Linux distribution was on the PC for “definitive” instructions.

If you need instructions for creating a LiveUSB key on a Linux PC or have any further questions, just let us know which Linux distribution is on the PC you are going to use for creating the key, and I’ll be happy to type up instructions. :slight_smile:

If you’re unsure which distribution you’re using, enter one of the following in a terminal:

cat /etc/*-release

or:

cat /proc/version

or:

cat /etc/issue

or:

lsb_release -a

or if non of the above give you anything, you could try:

uname -a

hit enter, and post back the results.
(remember - Linux commands ARE case sensitive)