So I log in as root (glad I didn't disable that yet) and do:
--------------------
(none):~# mount -n -o remount, rw /
There should be no space between the comma and "rw". But the next
lines in your mail suggest that it worked, so now I'm puzzled...
EXT2-fs warning: mounting unchecked fs, running e2fsck is recommended
(none):~# e2fsck /dev/hda1
e2fsck 1.18, 11-Nov-1999 for EXT2 FS 0.5b, 95/08/09
/dev/hda1 is mounted.
WARNING!!! Running e2fsck on a mounted filesystem may cause
SEVERE filesystem damage.
Do you really want to continue (y/n)? no
As far as I know, the safe way to check a root filesystem is having it
mounted read-only. (actually, better to have it not mounted at all,
but then you wouldn't be able to access any commands in /bin, configs
in /etc, ...). So if you make sure the root filesystem is mounted
read-only (eg by not executing the mount command above), it should be
OK to run the check.
After previous boots when I tried to remount the root as rw I got an
error message that /etc/mtab couldn't be written. That I do not get now.
That could be because of the extra space in your mount command (see
above). The "rw" would not be seen as an option but rather as a mount
point, mount would ignore it because it doesn't exist, and I imagine
the root filesystem would be remounted read-only again, thus not
allowing the creation of mtab (currently mounted filesystems).
Hope this helps a bit. Perhaps someone else can be of further assistance.
Carlos
