[ubuntu-uk] Big filesystem problem

[Rob Beard]

Kris Douglas wrote:
> 2009/5/5 Tony Travis <a.travis at abdn.ac.uk>:
>   
>> Kris Douglas wrote:
>>     
>>> Hello, I'm updating an Ubuntu machine to 8.10 and then 9, but during
>>> the update, update-manager crashed with an IOError (number 30) the
>>> filesystem became read only, the whole system is now read only, I
>>> can't create a folder anywhere, as root or as a normal user...
>>>
>>> Any ideas?
>>>       
>> Hello, Kris.
>>
>> This is normal behaviour if your /etc/fstab has an entry like this:
>>
>>     
>>> UUID=... /     ext3    relatime,errors=remount-ro 0       1
>>>       
>> The mount option "errors=remount-ro" tells the kernel to remount the '/'
>> filesystem read-only if any errors occur. This is to prevent a chain
>> reaction of corruption in which you might lose the entire filesystem!
>>
>> Best advice is to reboot from the Ubuntu 'live' CD, and salvage anything
>> precious from the '/' filesystem on the hard disk while you can. Then,
>> after that, run filesystem diagnostics from the 'live' CD, using e.g.:
>>
>>   sudo -i
>>   fsck /dev/sda1 # or whatever partition your '/' filesystem is on.
>>
>> It might also be a good idea to try:
>>
>>   badblocks -sp1 /dev/sda
>>
>> Good luck!
>>
>>   Tony.
>>     
>
> Hello everyone, thanks for your replies, it turns out that in the end
> the system had just munched itself as Tony said. I decided since Its
> so badly out of date, and as its just a file server, I'm going to move
> all the stuff onto one of my TB drives, install the new version of
> Ubuntu and put it all back. Thanks for your advice everyone. :)
>
>
>   
Good luck.  It's annoying when it happens.  I've had it happen a couple 
of times to me, usually because of disc failure.  Now I'm in the habit 
of replacing hard drives every year or so (I tend to fill drives on my 
server often, in fact today I've upgraded one disc from 320GB to 640GB 
because it was running low on space).  Roll on Blu-ray writers coming 
down to about £50 :-)

Rob