Need to fix badly-mounted partition.

[Derek Broughton]

Dotan Cohen wrote:

> On 3/20/06, Derek Broughton <news at pointerstop.ca> wrote:
>> Dotan Cohen wrote:
>>
>> > When I fired up qtparted to do some work on my ~/music partition, I
>> > get this in the console:
>> > Error: Invalid argument during seek for read on /dev/hda
>> > Error: Filesystem was not cleanly unmounted!  You should e2fsck.
>> > Modifying an unclean filesystem could cause severe corruption.
>> > Error: Invalid argument during seek for read on /dev/hda
>> >
>> > I don't want to screw anything up, so what would be the advisable
>> > course of action? Thank you in advance.
>>
>> umount the partition.  If you can't umount the partition go to single
>> user
>> mode, and umount it.  Then fsck the partition.
>>
>> However, I just have to ask why you're using an ext2 partition these
>> days. At _least_ convert it to ext3 - it's just a matter of adding the
>> journal. Then if your filesystem doesn't get properly shut down, the
>> journal will be processed on restart to keep your filesystem clean.
> 
> It most definatly is an ext3 partition.
> root at ety:~# cat /etc/fstab | grep hda3
> /dev/hda3 /home/dotancohen/music ext3
> defaults,atime,auto,rw,dev,exec,suid,nouser 0 2

That's good and bad...  good that you have a journaled system, but: I think
that means you already _have_ a serious problem with your partition.  I was
wondering about the "Invalid argument during seek" - that looks more like
either your system is using the wrong drive geometry (BIOS settings?) or
hardware failure.  

Still umounting it and fscking will work if things aren't already totally
broken.
-- 
derek