read-only file system sporratic

[Jim Pelton]

Matt Patterson wrote:

> I get this occasionally on my usb external disks. You should unmount 
> the disk:
>
> sudo umount /dev/sdb1
>
> Then you should run fsck on it:
>
> sudo fsck /dev/sdb1
>
> or for vfat drives (windows):
>
> sudo dosfsck /dev/sdb1 -a
>
> You might have to specify some more options to make them fix the disk 
> problems automatically. The problem is caused by errors in the file 
> system, so linux remounts it read only.
>
> Then remount the drive:
>
> sudo mount /dev/sdb1 ???
>
> That should solve your problem and without rebooting. If you really 
> dont want to wait for the fsck to run you can simply unmount and 
> remount it, which will make it read/write again, but that is probably 
> a bad idea.
>
> Matt
>
>
>
> Jim Pelton wrote:
>
>> Hello all! Here's an interesting one for ya. Twice now I have been 
>> working away fine, music playing, network humming along...things are 
>> great.
>>
>> Then I will try to start firefox, emacs, or send an email with 
>> Thunderbird, save document with OOWriter, do anything that writes to 
>> the disk /dev/hdb (/dev/hdb1 to be exact with the partition number) 
>> and I get an error message. If the program is such that it out puts 
>> the error to an XTerm it usualy reads something to the tune of "IO 
>> Error could not write to disk: read-only file system." The problem 
>> persists until I force a reboot.
>>
>> The reboot must be forced by shutting down the system because during 
>> the shutdown the machine freezes with error after error of "EXT3-fs 
>> ... ... read-only file system" or something of that nature. Now get 
>> this, when I start the computer up next time, it does it's BIOS 
>> system start-up stuff, then imideatly reports that "Hard Drive 1 is 
>> opporating outside of normal parameters...replace the drive...yada 
>> yada."
>>
>> This happened this morning after it had been working fine for two or 
>> three days following some fixes done by fsck. It sounded like another 
>> fan started up, the HD started grinding, then the fan noise stopped 
>> and the errors came. I rebooted (by forcing a shutdown) and the 
>> computer came up fine this time, no erros at bootup, and no problems 
>> for several hours since.
>>
>> Any suggestions? Hardware or software problem? Are there any tests I 
>> could run?
>>
>> Oh /dev/hdb is the startup disk with usr directories and /boot. 
>> "touch testfile" does not work, even as root, however if I connect to 
>> the mount point of /dev/hda1 I can read/write just fine.
>>
>> Thanks for the help!
>>
>> Jim
>>
>
>
Matt, thanks for you help, but because this is the disk which contains 
the OS I can not unmount it like that. I think I would have to boot off 
of a separate drive to unmount this disk and repair it...or perhaps 
repair it at boot time. Can I do that with safe mode or something? Your 
post does alleviate my worries that I had a hardware problem however. 
Though I do kind of want a new computer, and that would have been a good 
excuse!


Jim