On 15 Aug, Mark Wagnon wrote:
> Hi all-
>
> I've managed to install the base system via floppies and I've spent
> several hours downloading packaged with dselect, and all seemed to
> be progressing nicely. I've only rebooted the system twice, and
> after downloading and installing something to do with the libc5
> libraries, dselect instructed me to reboot when it was finished. So
> after everything was installed and configured, I rebooted the
> machine with Ctrl-Alt-Del, but I didn't stop to think if that's okay
> with Debian (it's posed no problem with any other dist that I've
> installed), so the system rebooted and when fsck started to check my
> filesystems it barfed up the following:
>
> ---Begin fsck message---
>
> Couldn't find ext2 super-block while trying to open /dev/hda
^^^^^^^^
>
> The superblock could not be read or does not describe a correct ext2
> filesystem. If the device is valid and it really contains an ext2
> filesystem (and not swap or ufs or something else), then the
> superblock is corrupt, and you might try running e2fsck with an
> alternate superblock: e2fsck -b 8193 <device>
>
> fsck failed. Please repair manually and reboot. Please note that the
> root filesystem is currently mounted read-only. To remount it
> read-write:
>
> #mount -n -o remount,rw /
>
> ---End fsck message ---
>
> I entered my root password and typed e2fsck -b 8193 /dev/hda1 at the
^^^^^^^^^
> prompt. fsck ran and asked me to fix a few things, and exited
> without any error messages. I rebooted (this time with shutdown -r
> now) and was presented with the same error message. I tried again,
> this time mounting the root filesystem read-write as mentioned
> above, but then fsck complained that the system was mounted and
> asked me if it should continue. Not sure of the consequences, I
> declined.
>
> The only thing that I can think of that affected the mounting of
> filesystems was I edited the /etc/fstab to include my cdrom,
> cdwriter, and floppy drive. I cleaned it up a little as it was
> "ugly", but I didn't modify any of the info on lines already present
> execept to format them nicer with tabs.
>
> I've never been presented with an error like this before, so I don't
> know what to do or where to look. I can't even bring up a man page
> on e2fsck.
>
> Am I screwed, or is there a solution to my dilemna? I would surely
> be disappointed if I had to trash everything I had accomplished up
> to this point. Heck I was proud of myself, because last year I
> couldn't figure out dselect!
>
> Thanks for any help,
>
Curious question - does the bootup message really say /dev/hda rather
than /dev/hda1? If so, that may be your problem. Check to see if in
editing your /etc/fstab, you didn't lose a "1" in the first line.
--
Stephen Ryan Debian GNU/Linux
Mathematics graduate student, Dartmouth College
