How to run e2fsck on partitions of internal disks?

[Zoltan Boszormenyi]

Hi,

I am using Fedora 17 and recently I got two Oopses:
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=852724

I suspect there *may* be some on-disk corruption but
I can't seem to be able to run e2fsck on my /home
which is 3.6TB in size. I booted into single mode and
ran "umount /home" but e2fsck on my home partition
still reports "resource is busy". lsof doesn't tell me
what's using the partition.

How can I run fsck on /home or maybe on / for that matter?
I guess booting the Fedora 17 DVD in rescue mode can be
used. But how to do it without it? I have used yum to upgrade
from F16 (and F14 before) and don't have the DVD at hand.

Thanks in advance,
Zoltán Böszörményi

[Zdenek Pytela]

Zoltan Boszormenyi writes:
> How can I run fsck on /home or maybe on / for that matter?
> I guess booting the Fedora 17 DVD in rescue mode can be
> used. But how to do it without it? I have used yum to upgrade
> from F16 (and F14 before) and don't have the DVD at hand.

The easiest way is to boot to single user mode: in grub either
choose apropriate menu entry which boots directly into single mode if you have it,
otherwise choose any kernel entry and edit line beginning with linux and
append the word 'single'.
    There are other ways: rescue mode from fedora dvd, any live
distribution on usb stick, booting from boot.fedoraproject.org. You may need
to remount root fs:
mount -o remount,ro /

[Zoltan Boszormenyi]

2012-08-29 17:16 keltezéssel, Zdenek Pytela írta:
> Zoltan Boszormenyi writes:
> > How can I run fsck on /home or maybe on / for that matter?
> > I guess booting the Fedora 17 DVD in rescue mode can be
> > used. But how to do it without it? I have used yum to upgrade
> > from F16 (and F14 before) and don't have the DVD at hand.
>
> The easiest way is to boot to single user mode: in grub either
> choose apropriate menu entry which boots directly into single mode if you have it,
> otherwise choose any kernel entry and edit line beginning with linux and
> append the word 'single'.

I did exactly that way, you didn't quote that part of my mail where I wrote it.
Let me quote now: " I booted into single mode and ran "umount /home" "
I did it before running e2fsck but it complain about "resource is busy".
I checked it, it wasn't mounted and the contents were not available under /home.
So, what has captured my partition that prevents fsck?
> There are other ways: rescue mode from fedora dvd, any live
> distribution on usb stick, booting from boot.fedoraproject.org. You may need
> to remount root fs:
> mount -o remount,ro /

I wanted to do without burning an extra DVD and waiting some hours
while the DVD is downloaded. Thanks anyway.

[Jack Craig]

On Wed, Aug 29, 2012 at 8:32 AM, Zoltan Boszormenyi wrote:
> 2012-08-29 17:16 keltezéssel, Zdenek Pytela írta:
> > Zoltan Boszormenyi writes:
> > > How can I run fsck on /home or maybe on / for that matter?
> > > I guess booting the Fedora 17 DVD in rescue mode can be
> > > used. But how to do it without it? I have used yum to upgrade
> > > from F16 (and F14 before) and don't have the DVD at hand.
> >     The easiest way is to boot to single user mode: in grub either
> >
> > choose apropriate menu entry which boots directly into single mode if you
> > have it,
> > otherwise choose any kernel entry and edit line beginning with linux and
> > append the word 'single'.
>
> I did exactly that way, you didn't quote that part of my mail where I
> wrote it.
> Let me quote now: " I booted into single mode and ran "umount /home" "
> I did it before running e2fsck but it complain about "resource is busy".
> I checked it, it wasn't mounted and the contents were not available under
> /home.
> So, what has captured my partition that prevents fsck?

AFAIK, you should never fsck a mounted fs, umount it first...
>      There are other ways: rescue mode from fedora dvd, any live
> > distribution on usb stick, booting from boot.fedoraproject.org. You may
> > need
> > to remount root fs:
> > mount -o remount,ro /
>
> I wanted to do without burning an extra DVD and waiting some hours
> while the DVD is downloaded. Thanks anyway.
>
> --
> users mailing list
> [e-mail]
> To unsubscribe or change subscription options:
> https://admin.fedoraproject.**org/mailman/listinfo/usershttps://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/users
> Guidelines: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/**Mailing_list_guidelineshttp://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines
> Have a question? Ask away: http://ask.fedoraproject.org

[Zdenek Pytela]

Zoltan Boszormenyi writes:
> > > How can I run fsck on /home or maybe on / for that matter?
> > > I guess booting the Fedora 17 DVD in rescue mode can be
> > > used. But how to do it without it? I have used yum to upgrade
> > > from F16 (and F14 before) and don't have the DVD at hand.
> >
> > The easiest way is to boot to single user mode: in grub either
> > choose apropriate menu entry which boots directly into single mode if you have it,
> > otherwise choose any kernel entry and edit line beginning with linux and
> > append the word 'single'.
>
> I did exactly that way, you didn't quote that part of my mail where I wrote it.
> Let me quote now: " I booted into single mode and ran "umount /home" "
> I did it before running e2fsck but it complain about "resource is busy".
> I checked it, it wasn't mounted and the contents were not available under /home.
> So, what has captured my partition that prevents fsck?

Booting directly into single mode (from grub) should not lead to
running daemons using home. You can check which services/mounts are
configured to single. And kill daemons which are run on /home:
fuser -m /home
Or try to remount.
> > There are other ways: rescue mode from fedora dvd, any live
> > distribution on usb stick, booting from boot.fedoraproject.org. You may need
> > to remount root fs:
> > mount -o remount,ro /
>
> I wanted to do without burning an extra DVD and waiting some hours
> while the DVD is downloaded. Thanks anyway.

Making liveusb stick is a bit easier, it will not be extra thing,
and you don't need to download full fedora instalation image. BFO also works
fine if your network card supports network boot.

[Hakan Koseoglu]

On 29 August 2012 13:58, Zoltan Boszormenyi  wrote:
> I suspect there *may* be some on-disk corruption but
> I can't seem to be able to run e2fsck on my /home
> which is 3.6TB in size. I booted into single mode and
> ran "umount /home" but e2fsck on my home partition
> still reports "resource is busy". lsof doesn't tell me
> what's using the partition.

Are the good old methods of doing shutdown with -F or touching a file
called forcefsck deprecated?

At worst, you should be able to use tune2fs and -C option to set the
mount-count and it will be automatically fsck'ed at the next reboot.
See the man page for details.

[Hakan Koseoglu]

On 29 August 2012 16:32, Zoltan Boszormenyi  wrote:
> So, what has captured my partition that prevents fsck?

To see the open files using a particular mount point, try lsof. Then
you can always kill those processes, if it is safe to do so.
You cannot unmount /home logged in as a non-root account since the
file system will be busy with various processes accessing it.