8 Jun
2009
8 Jun
'09
10:37 p.m.
Adam said:
This doesn't explain what happens if your root
filesystem is hosed
badly enough that it requires a manual fsck before it can be mounted
read/write. In that case it always prompts for a root password,
right?
I can't remember and hope not to have to need to do it again...
... but I did need to do this a while back. The RC of one version
(Hardy?) had a problem with the wireless driver for this laptop's
chipset and would kernel panic every so often. Because of this, I
discovered that the start up scripts include a check to see if the PC
is on battery power and, if so, it skips fsck-ing even damaged file
systems.
I did a bug report, and while the developers went 'feature, feature'
(without ever explaining why it would be a good thing) everyone else
thinks it's a bug.
Unclean JFS partitions will only mount read-only, for example, so you
can be left with a brick until you can get to a mains power supply.
Ian