Ubuntu Load Up: Fails

[Leonard Chatagnier]

--- On Fri, 12/26/08, Chadd Monahan <Chadd at Chefsusa.com> wrote:

> From: Chadd Monahan <Chadd at Chefsusa.com>
> Subject: Ubuntu Load Up: Fails
> To: "Ubuntu user technical support, not for general discussions" <ubuntu-users at lists.ubuntu.com>
> Date: Friday, December 26, 2008, 10:26 AM
> Hi. I have Ubuntu installed on a Dell Laptop that had
> Windows XP Home
> Edition and Professional on it. I decided to give this old
> laptop to my
> younger brother with Ubuntu on it for his birthday. We used
> the whole
> hard drive for Ubuntu, removing Windows. After a week or
> two, the laptop
> could not boot right. He turned it on, waited the normal
> time, saw the
> Ubuntu boot screen, and after that, it had some error and
> fdschk could
> not load automatically. (It was in white text with a black
> background)
> It said the administrator had to perform it. I am no
> administrator, and
> I need help fixing it shortly. If you need more
> information, I am here
> most of the day. I just need it fixed shortly. Thanks!
> 
>  Here is what it says: 
> 
>  
> 
>  Runs FDSCK
> 
> c/dev/sda1: Unexpected Inconsistency: Run FDSCK manually. 
> 
> fdschk dies with exit status 4
> 
>  An automatic fdschk of the root file system failed.
> 
> 
> 
>  The root file system currently mounted in read-only mode.
> A
> maintenance shell will now be started. After performing
> maintenance,
> press CTRL-D to terminate the maintenance shell and restart
> the system.
> bash: no job in this shell. 
> 
Try this, from the root prompt, #:
# umount -a
make sure it say your hard drive is not mounted and does not
say it is busy. To proceed, if it says busy is dangerous and
and likely will ruin the file system if you proceed.  Then
run:
# fsck /dev/sda1
Let it run to completion; may take a long time and ask you
some cryptic questions. just answer yes to each. When it 
completes hit CNTRL-D to reboot and if everything is OK
it should reboot OK.  If not, you can try the above again
a time or two especially if it suggests to repeat it.
But in my experience if it doesn't fix things after one or
two tries, the OS is messed up and most likely you'll need
to reinstall the OS.  Good luck and HTH.

Leonard Chatagnier
lenc5570 at sbcglobal.net