fscking after hard boot

[yaz420]

I had to restart my Linux box, which is running RH 7.1, and when it was checking the filesystem like it always does when it starts up. It said something like there was a problem with the filesystem and I would have to run fsck. I've been trying to figure this out, but can't find anything that was of any help. So if anyone knows anything about fscking and how to run it please help me!

Thanks!

- Jay

[furrycat]

fsck stands for FileSystem ChecK. It is run at bootup to scan for any problems with the filesystem. It can fix some problems automatically but needs to be run manually to solve others. This is because there is a possibility (very slight) that its actions could have unfortunate consequences.

You need to start up in single user mode and run "fsck /dev/XXX" where XXX is the partition which is dodgy.

fsck takes a number of arguments, the most interesting of which is -a. "fsck -a" will fix any problems without prompting. Of course the man page says to use this with caution but unless you know what kind of errors can happen with filesystems and how you would go about fixing them, just use it and get your filesystem back up and working with the minimum of fuss.