Any ideas why I got a corrupt filesystem error on reboot? (solved)

[sledgehammer]

This afternoon,  my Vector 5.8 system (loaded on an Omnibook 900b pentium 3) began to slow way down and the fan stayed on.  After closing a lot of programs, fan went off, but still sluggish (mouse jumped, etc). I did cntrl-alt backspace (signed out) and still sluggish.  So I rebooted and in coming up got a corrupt file system error, saying that I could go to root and see what was going on (I have reserif).  Did that, went to /home, and nothing was there (My data files are on hda3).  Tried rebooting several times.  Same error.

So I loaded puppy and saved everything with its excellent cdwriter. 

I then rebooted, ready to type fsck /dev/hda3, to see if I could get past error.  And it went through to the gui page!  I am writing this on it now and it seems to be working fine.  Now. Even though I repaired nothing, either in Vector or Puppy.

Any thoughts on what happened and what to do if it happens again (or perhaps what to do to prevent it from happening again)?

John

[lagagnon]

Possibly a failing hard drive? You might want to go to the HD manufacturer's website, download their bootable diagnostic diskette for that drive, and double check that is not an issue for you.

[easuter]

What filesystem are you using?

[sledgehammer]

reiserFS

John

[sledgehammer]

Status report re corrupted file system:

Even though it booted up into Vector 5.8 fine, LOCATE did not work.  Said it couldn't find slocate or some such.  UPDATEDB would not work either, for same reason.

So I booted into text mode and from root umounted /dev/hda3 and ran fsck /dev/hda3 and all was fine. Figured problem was in hda2.

Then, being unable to umount hda2, I booted into user mode 1 (hard to do for me--perhaps put instructions on the Penquin screen?), and umounted /dev/hda2

fsck showed error.  Said rebuild-tree but could not from fsck.  Finally tried

reiserfsck /dev/hda2 --rebuild-tree

and that worked.

System seems fine now but am still cautious.

Thanks

John

[orasis]

reiserFS

John

Reiser is very sensitive to abrupt quits/power-failures/ etc... it is not as 'hardy' as EXT3 - this seems to be a documented failing of the ReiserFS... so be careful. - when in ReiserFS I would always advise to when you can... shutdown the proper way... and when a power failure occurs... to pray

[Vxt]

Sorry to disagree  ~ But that is simply not true Re Reiserfs

Do NOT kill a running desktop via Ctrl+Alt+Bspc

If any Apps running in background ->  It WILL sooner or later corrupt your files
(no chance to write back to drive/s before closing GUI session)

Write Back Modes

Instead, use (ps ax) or (top) to find bad process
 & (kill -9  n_xx)  {n _xx is Process I.D_ number from either above utility}
 to kill any hung Apps -

Plse refer to (man ps,  top,   & kill)

A failing  hard drive will AWAYS  give lots of warnings before dying !
Long prior to failure, there  will be odd read failures - repetitive attempts
& screen error Msgs

UNLESS it is a sudden drive device bearing failure (highly unlikely)

Many BIOS's  have S.M.A.R.T. feature

Helps to also check in /var/log or /tmp for system event  Msgs