Need to fix badly-mounted partition.

[Dotan Cohen]

On 3/20/06, Derek Broughton <news at pointerstop.ca> wrote:
> Dotan Cohen wrote:
>
> > On 3/20/06, Derek Broughton <news at pointerstop.ca133> 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
>

Thanks. I have on that disk:
hda2: /
hda3: /home/user/pictures
hda5: swap
hda6: /home

All except for hda3 are nessacary for booting. How do I know which
partition is 'bad'?

And what does it mean to fsck a disk? I know that fsck is a partition
tool, but what is actually happening? Thanks.