On Mon, Oct 12, 1998 at 06:10:24PM +0000, Andy Spiegl wrote:
> Hi!
>
> trying to install new packages I just noticed that I can't write to
> /var/lib/dpkg anymore. The error I get is:
> "No space left on device".
>
> I took a look at /var/log/kern.log and found this:
>
> ... kernel: EXT2-fs error (device 08:07): ext2_new_block: Free blocks count \
> corrupted for block group 4
> ... last message repeated 207 times
> ... last message repeated 133 times
> and so on.
>
> Help! What can I do to resolve this without rebooting the machine?
> Well, I guess I could reboot it, but it is very far away from me and if it
> gets stuck during the reboot I'd have an even bigger problem. Besides,
> there are some users logged in and I'd hate to kick them out. :-(
>
> Please send help soon!
> Thanks so much in advance,
> Andy.
>
I've read the other messages in this thread, so I know you survived
ok :-). But for future reference, here are some helpful things to know:
1) You usually don't have to reboot to fsck a filesystem, especially
a non-root filesystem. First, kick off your users (shutdown -k is
useful for this). Then umount the filesystem, fsck it, and remount it.
This works great for /home, not so well for /var, since it tends to
be in use all the time. If you can't umount it, take the system to
single-user mode with 'telinit 1', then try the umount/fsck.
2) If you're wondering whether or not fsck will be run at boot time:
most Linux/Unix installations, including Debian, test for the
presence of a /forcefsck file in the rc scripts at boot time. If
this file exists, all filesystems in /etc/fstab are fsck'ed. So:
# touch /forcefsck
# shutdown -r now
Check out /etc/init.d/checkfs.sh for more details.
miket
