I'm having a problem with my testing+unstable system, and I'm not sure whether it's a hardware or software problem. It has rendered my system virtually useless. But before I start fooling around with hardware, I'd like to see if my problem might be familiar to any of you, and if perhaps there is some sort of known fix for it, software-wise.
The problem is that yesterday, my root file partition started booting up read-only. Because /var and /tmp are on that partition, my system is virtually useless. I haven't made any kernel changes for more than two weeks, and I have booted up numerous times with my 2.4.20-686-smp kernel without a single problem before yesterday. I have a Dell 530 box with dual Xeon 1700MHz processors. I have two 17G SCSI disks: SEAGATE model ST318451LW, Rev: 0003, Type: Direct-Access. I have an Adaptec controler (I'm not sure what model), and I went through the SCSI verification (accessible at boot-up time via Ctrl-A), and both disks verify fine ... no bad blocks, no errors of any kind. I get numerous "read-only file system" errors on boot-up, and then the system freezes for a long time. But finally, it unfreezes and the boot continues limpingly, until I finally get a login prompt on the console. As you probably surmise, I cannot bring up X, but at least I can run simple things from the console. A while ago, I had changed my /etc/fstab by commenting out and replacing my root partition mount, as follows: #/dev/sda2 / ext3 errors=remount-ro 0 1 /dev/sda2 / ext3 0 1 Since the "errors=remount-ro" line is commented out, I don't see how this could be causing my problem ... or could it? I'm writing you from my webmail account via my (ARGGH!) Windows-based laptop, but at least my Linux machine is nearby and I can run a few diagnostics on it. Does any of this sound familiar? Can any of you suggest some diagnostics that I can run that might help me zero in on the problem? As I mentioned, I'm not sure if this is a hardware or software problem ... but I want to eliminate the software before I start taking my machine apart. Thanks in advance for any help you folks can give me on this. -- Lloyd Zusman [EMAIL PROTECTED] God bless you. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
