Ext3 users - Jan 2004 - Checking root filesystem: Failed

Hi

I am using ext3 on Smoothwall Express 2 firewall,
which I understand is based originally off Red Hat.

The machine runs headless, without a monitor. On one
ocassion booting stopped, hooking up a monitor
revealed this, 

-- console output --
/dev/harddisk4 has been mounted 29 times without being
checked, check forced. 
/dev/harddisk4: 
Optimizing directories: 47165 140835 
/dev/harddisk4: ***** REBOOT LINUX ***** 
/dev/harddisk4: 12020/328608 files (0.2
non-contiguous), 46910/657216 blocks 
Checking root filesystem: Failed 
*** An error occurred during the file system check. 
*** Dropping you to a shell; the system will reboot 
*** when you leave the shell. 
Give root password for maintenance 
(or type Control-D for normal startup): 
-- console output end --

How do I find out what error occured? 

I don't know much about ext3, I use reiserfs on a
desktop machine. I have tried e2fsck and badblocks and
the disk does not have any badblocks on any parition. 

Is it the disk playing up or ext3? 

At the moment I switch Smoothwall off each night, is
it being switched off too much? I should stress I did
shutdown properly, the fsck check was because
"/dev/harddisk4 has been mounted 29 times without
being checked, check forced" not because it was
uncleanly umounted.

I am using a 3.2gb Maxtor drive, on a AX59pro mobo,
AMD K6-2 300mhz, 128mb ram, running Smoothwall 2.0
fixes 1. 

-- Partitions --
df -h 
Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on

/dev/harddisk4        2.5G  145M  2.2G   7% / 
/dev/harddisk1        7.6M  3.4M  3.8M  47% /boot 
/dev/harddisk3        636M   22M  581M   4% /var/log 

cat /etc/fstab 
/dev/harddisk1          /boot                   ext3  
 defaults        1 2 
/dev/harddisk2          swap                    swap  
 defaults        0 0 
/dev/harddisk3          /var/log                ext3  
 defaults        1 2 
/dev/harddisk4          /                       ext3  
 defaults        1 1 
none                    /proc                   proc  
 defaults        0 0

Many thanks 
Richie

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On Wed, Jan 21, 2004 at 12:29:35PM +0000, Ricardo Daniels
wrote:
> Hi
> 
> I am using ext3 on Smoothwall Express 2 firewall,
> which I understand is based originally off Red Hat.
> 
> The machine runs headless, without a monitor. On one
> ocassion booting stopped, hooking up a monitor
> revealed this, 
This is a bug in the init scripts.  According to the fsck man page:

       The exit code returned by fsck is the sum of the following conditions:
            0    - No errors
            1    - File system errors corrected
            2    - System should be rebooted
            4    - File system errors left uncorrected
            8    - Operational error
            16   - Usage or syntax error
            32   - Fsck canceled by user request
            128  - Shared library error

In the case where the root filesystem has errors corrected, an exit
code of 3 is returned (filesystem errors corrected, system should be
rebooted).  The system needs to be rebooted because cached information
in the mounted root filesystem may have been incorrect and modified by
e2fsck.  Hence, it is not safe to remount the root filesystem
read/write after it has been modified.

Some init scripts do not interpret an exit return of 2 or 3 as "reboot
immediately", but instead stop and give the error:
> *** An error occurred during the file system check. 
> *** Dropping you to a shell; the system will reboot 
> *** when you leave the shell. 
> Give root password for maintenance 
> (or type Control-D for normal startup): 
> -- console output end --
If you hit the big red button and reboot, it will be fine.

							- Ted