[gentoo-user] Re: reiserfschk stops boot but reports nothing

[Harry Putnam <reader@newsguy.com>]

Peter <pete4abw@comcast.net> writes:

> On Sat, 11 Mar 2006 09:58:55 -0600, Harry Putnam wrote:
>
> all snip...
>
> Here's what I would do. Boot off a floppy or livecd.
> Then, do NOT mount your root drive (/dev/hdb6) you may have a problem
> with. run 

Maybe I'm just not understanding your terminology here but /dev/hdb6
is not a root drive.  It isn't even a system drive at all like /usr
/var etc.


> reiserfsck --check /dev/hdb6 

Yes .. this exits silently and further leaving out --check does
exactly the same thing anyway.

> and see what pops up. If you get a message to run fix-fixable, then follow
> those directions.

Nothing pops up.  I even ran --fix-fixable to see if anything would
happen.  It did not.

> It could be as simple as not shutting down properly or having had to
> reboot without shutting down at all. A status bit is set on the drive
> which tells fsck that it was not shutdown properly. Reiser is unique in
> that it can't really check the root partition carefully because it is
> always mounted read-only when it checks it.

If that were it wouldn't it disappear after reiserfchk?

> But definitely, you need to boot off a different medium to fix this.

I'm not following this.  Maybe you thought it was / ?  Or am I missing
an important part of this?

It is /anex2  a disk I keep backups of some stuff on.  Mostly rsync
writes to it during an rsnapshot run.

Shouldn't I be able to just umount it and get the same results as if
checking from separate media?  
I can do what you suggest easily so not arguing against it, just not
understanding whey it would be different than the reported 
umount  followed by reiserfsck /dev/hdb6 that exits silently.

On further investigation:
I'm finding it exits with exit code 16 which is supposed to mean a
syntax error... now I'm really puzzled:

  umount /dev/hdb6  <no output>

  mount /anex2  <no output but a pause of about 1 second>
  # echo $?  
  0

  df -h
  [...]
  /dev/hdb6              47G   12G   35G  26% /anex2

  umount /anex2
  
   # reiserfsck --check /dev/hdb6
reiserfsck 3.6.19 (2003 www.namesys.com)

*************************************************************
** If you are using the latest reiserfsprogs and  it fails **
** please  email bug reports to reiserfs-list@namesys.com, **
** providing  as  much  information  as  possible --  your **
** hardware,  kernel,  patches,  settings,  all reiserfsck **
** messages  (including version),  the reiserfsck logfile, **
** check  the  syslog file  for  any  related information. **
** If you would like advice on using this program, support **
** is available  for $25 at  www.namesys.com/support.html. **
*************************************************************

Will read-only check consistency of the filesystem on /dev/hdb6
Will put log info to 'stdout'

Do you want to run this program?[N/Yes] (note need to type Yes if you
do): yes <enter>

 echo $?
  16

>From man reiserfsck [emphisis added -hp]:
EXIT CODES
       reiserfsck uses the following exit codes:
          0 - No errors.
          1 - File system errors corrected.
          2 - Reboot is needed.
          4 - File system fatal errors left uncorrected,
              reiserfsck --rebuild-tree needs to be launched.
          6 - File system fixable errors left uncorrected,
              reiserfsck --fix-fixable needs to be launched.
          8 - Operational error.
***       16 - Usage or syntax error.



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