Re: hang on bootstrap

[Riccardo Mottola]

Hi,

Justus Winter wrote:
> The output changes, but hangs in the same place:
>
> <...>
> start ext2fs: ext2fs: device:hd0s1: warning: FILESYSTEM NOT UNMOUNTED
> CLEANLY; PLEASE fsck
> ext2fs: device:hd0s1: warning: MOUNTED READ-ONLY; MUST USE 'fsysopts
> ''writable'
> Hurd server bootstrap: ext2fs[device:hd0s1] exec
> It's funny that you get a different output...
funny is a bit sarcastic here, right?

> > What is happening? is ext2fs server haning because my filesystem wasn't
> > cleanly unmounted? It would be nice to get at least in single-user and
> > run fsck!
> I'm afraid that at this point in the Hurd bootstrap, if either of
> ext2fs or exec dies, nothing will be displayed.
>
> If you are running a debug kernel (and you should), you can break into
> the kernel debugger using ctrl-alt-d and do:
I'll check, to be honest, I just leave aptitude install and update.
> To recover from this, use a Hurd live CD (I guess the Debian installer
> CD will do), or even a random Debian/Linux live CD.  Run fsck on your
> root filesystem.  If that doesn't help, some important files might
> have been corrupted.  You could then try reinstalling the hurd,
> hurd-libs, and libc0.3 packages.  This is doable even from Linux
> (mount your rootfs using mount -t ext2 /dev/your/root /mnt, use
> dpkg-deb --extract hurd.deb /mnt).
I used a live-cd and did run fsck on both filesystems (I have / and 
/home separate since when I reinstalled, so at least HURD doesn't mess 
up my personal data...)
Sadly it still hangs at boot. This means I need to try to recover. I'll 
try your procedure. If I am lucky the .deb files are still on the same 
partition.
> To prevent this in the future, regularly run touch /forcefsck to force
> a fsck on your filesystems.  There is a known problem in ext2fs
> affecting root filesystem translators, deleted inodes with zero dtime
> are accumulating until no free inodes are left.
Indeed, running fsck found a lot of "inodes with zero dtime" to fix. 
Looks something nice to fix :)

Riccardo