filesystem with errors

[infiniphunk]

I have had this problem with knoppix and now its happened after installing Ubuntu. After doing an installation and then setting it up and using it for a week or so, on boot I get a problem that says "/dev/hda1 cotains a filesystem with errors, check forced..." then it going through doing fsck and it starts counting through 1%...2%...3%.... an on like that. Then it halts and says something about haveing to mount /dev/hda1 manually to run fsck...or CTRL-D to reboot. This is a Toshiba Satellite laptop (just over a year old) and it was doing it before with knoppix 3.6, now its doing it with the recent Ubuntu install. I googled around but can only find others with the same problem and no solid explanation of why this happens or how to really fix it. The last time it happened it did the above described stuff and then it started saying "Buffer I/O error on dev hda1....logical block 2785319 on and on. Needless to say I tried to reboot a couple of times and it kept doing this. Good thing nothing important saved on the laptop as it would no longer boot.
I reinstalled Ubuntu and in the options booted linux noapic as it says in the boot options to set it up this way if there are problems booting. Now when it starts up it will says root= /dev/hda1 ro noapic quiet bootsplash... or soemthing; anyway, does anyone know how to get around this problem? I hope it doesn't happen again after this most recent install, and also hoping that there isn't a hardware failure involved here(just had to buy a new mobo for my desktop; this is getting costly). :eek:

Thanks!

[gehidore]

Sounds like a disk failure, OR bad disk settings.

Try new cables.

[infiniphunk]

Thanks gehidore, I sure hope its not disc failure! What do you mean by "bad disk settings"? -"try new cables"?
You see, I am not a hardware expert (yet) by any means and this is not evenmy laptop. Its my spouse's laptop, and although she's being very cool about it, I feel really bad that this problem is persisting. It's still under warranty; i just hope Toshiba wont give us some "you installed linux on it and now its fsck'd" nonsense. I doubt I would have voided the warranty by installing linux on this laptop but with the crookedness of these companies these days...i wouldn't put it past them.
As far as looking for clues in syslog as to what the problem is I'm not sure what to look for. Should I run a live CD and run fsdsk on /dev/hda1? What I mean is, how can I know for sure its a hardware and not a software issue? If so, then I can take advantage of the warranty that is still good. Your suggestions are as always, much appreciated!!!

[gehidore]

Originally posted by infiniphunk
Thanks gehidore, I sure hope its not disc failure! What do you mean by "bad disk settings"? -"try new cables"?
You see, I am not a hardware expert (yet) by any means and this is not evenmy laptop. Its my spouse's laptop, and although she's being very cool about it, I feel really bad that this problem is persisting. It's still under warranty; i just hope Toshiba wont give us some "you installed linux on it and now its fsck'd" nonsense. I doubt I would have voided the warranty by installing linux on this laptop but with the crookedness of these companies these days...i wouldn't put it past them.
As far as looking for clues in syslog as to what the problem is I'm not sure what to look for. Should I run a live CD and run fsdsk on /dev/hda1? What I mean is, how can I know for sure its a hardware and not a software issue? If so, then I can take advantage of the warranty that is still good. Your suggestions are as always, much appreciated!!!

It's a laptop? If so, how hot does it get?

[Icarus]

"bad disk settings" could mean check the hdparam settings, or play around with them. I've seen sometimes dma causes errors, sometimes no dma causes errors. Check into the option with hdparm and check the hardware manufacture on the stats for the drive to see what youshould try for settings

I'd also make sure that it's being shutdown properly, usually that will force a check on startup

[infiniphunk]

The laptop is being shut down properly. Do you know if there is a utility on a live CD that I can use to check if there is something actually physically wrong with the HD?
Also, something weird I have noticed. I checked in /mnt and it doesn't show anything mounted there? i'm beginning to think there is something I'm doing wrong, except you'd think Ubuntu would set this up right during install.
Is there some special considerations that I have overlooked when installing linux on a laptop?

[gehidore]

paste the output of hdparm /dev/hd*
where /dev/hd* is the hard drive with problems.

[infiniphunk]

output of hdparm /dev/hda:

/dev/hda:
multcount = 0 (off)
IO_support = 0 (default 16-bit)
unmaskirq = 0 (off)
using_dma = 1 (on)
keepsettings = 0 (off)
readonly = 0 (off)
readahead = 8192 (on)
geometry = 16383/255/63, sectors = 78140160, start = 0

and hdparm /dev/hda1:

multcount = 0 (off)
IO_support = 0 (default 16-bit)
unmaskirq = 0 (off)
using_dma = 1 (on)
keepsettings = 0 (off)
readonly = 0 (off)
readahead = 8192 (on)
geometry = 16383/255/63, sectors = 77144067, start = 63

I'm pretty sure its hda1 that always has the problem when the system says "errors found on hda1, filesystem check forced".

[gehidore]

/dev/hda1 is your /boot partition right? (my scsi drives with reiserfs do this every boot on my /boot partition, but it never finds errors, afaik it has to do with fstab settings)

try turning off dma on /dev/hda (in the bios if you can) if not hdparm -d0 /dev/hda

but this only works for the current session.

[Alex Cavnar, aka alc6379]

Originally posted by infiniphunk
Thanks gehidore, I sure hope its not disc failure! What do you mean by "bad disk settings"? -"try new cables"?
You see, I am not a hardware expert (yet) by any means and this is not evenmy laptop. Its my spouse's laptop, and although she's being very cool about it, I feel really bad that this problem is persisting. It's still under warranty; i just hope Toshiba wont give us some "you installed linux on it and now its fsck'd" nonsense. I doubt I would have voided the warranty by installing linux on this laptop but with the crookedness of these companies these days...i wouldn't put it past them.
As far as looking for clues in syslog as to what the problem is I'm not sure what to look for. Should I run a live CD and run fsdsk on /dev/hda1? What I mean is, how can I know for sure its a hardware and not a software issue? If so, then I can take advantage of the warranty that is still good. Your suggestions are as always, much appreciated!!!

BEFORE calling Toshiba support, be sure to wipe the drive out, and at least attempt to reinstall Windows on it. Don't even mention that you installed Linux on it-- the less they know, the better.

[infiniphunk]

I can install my own personal copy of XPee if needed, and I did so just to try(shudder)
I re-installed Ubuntu, because it much nicer on my nerves. Anyway...
Here are a few more things I find a bit strange, perhaps they are clues.

1. under /mnt, there is NOTHING. Is that normal?

2. fstab shows:


# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
/dev/hda1 / ext3 defaults,errors=remount-ro 0 1
/dev/hda5 none swap sw 0 0
/dev/hdc /media/cdrom0 udf,iso9660 ro,user,noauto 0 0

hda1 is where / is. It is my boot partition.
From what I understand of what is happening here, when the situation arrises I have to become root, remount hda1 so that it is rw, then run fsck on it? Even though it warns me I can loose all data doing this? Yikes! I am also aware that the system is set to do this on boot every so may boots; is it possible on this system this is set too low?
BTW, if I have to become root to do the above mentioned task, I need to know the actual root psw. In Ubunto however, we only use sudo. I COULD change the root psw, but not sure if that is a good idea or not. Again, thanks for helping me guys!