Subject: Re: fsck doesn't work at boot time
To: Brook Milligan <brook@trillium.NMSU.Edu>
From: Brett Lymn <blymn@baea.com.au>
List: netbsd-help
Date: 06/20/1997 12:52:23
According to Brook Milligan:
>
>My experience with this is that only if fsck is run in single user
>mode with the filesystems unmounted will it mark the root filesystem
>as clean.  Otherwise, the 'not clean' message seems to persist. 

It would appear, from the partition, that Peter is having problems
with his root partition.  This is a tricky one to get unmounted unless
you boot from floppy.  You can avoid having to boot from floppy by
booting to single user and doing a fsck on the root partition.  Once
the fsck is done then either a) power off the machine immediately or
b) run "shutdown -n".  Doing this is important because if you try and
shutdown nicely the kernel will copy the munged super-block back onto
disk and undo the work that fsck has done so you must carefully avoid
syncing the bad info back to disk.

>
>In any case, you can clean the filesystem in single user mode and as
>long as you don't reset the machine or turn it off without halting it,
>the 'not clean' message won't reappear.
>

excepting just after you fsck'ed the root file system - all other
instances you should halt the machine.

-- 
Brett Lymn, Computer Systems Administrator, British Aerospace Australia
===============================================================================
  What do you get when you cross a cantaloup with a dog?        Melancholy :-P