today the ext3 on my fc6 T43 crashes :(

[David Timms]

Jörn Rink wrote:
> Hi,
> i do not know if the todays update has effected this, i think not.
> 
> While updating, the filesystem switched itself to only readable.
> After that, i reboot my t43
Sorry to be so dumb but what is t43 ?

> and fsck.ext3 has to fix the fs.
> It recognize some errors, fix it, but the system is not usable.
Usable ? Does it boot at all ? how far does it get ?

...
> When i use fdisk know, it shows a warning to me:
> 
> Partition 1 does not end on cylinder boundary.
This seems reasonably common, even when there is no problems that I can 
see with a machine. When using parted, the error message is:
(parted) print
Warning: Unable to align partition properly. This probably means that 
another
partitioning tool generated an incorrect partition table, because it 
didn't have
the correct BIOS geometry. It is safe to ignore,but ignoring may cause
(fixable) problems with some boot loaders.

> Another Problem:
> smartd shows me in the /var/log/messages sometimes:
> 
> Device /dev/sda, 1 Offline uncorrectable sectors.
> Is this an error, is this a powermanagement feature from the hd, which
> smartd does not recognize?
Bad blocks on the disk. Usually the drive is designed with reserve 
space, that is normally inaccessible. When a failing sector is detected, 
smart can remap the bad block to the reserve area (and lets you know 
about it). Sometimes this is indicative that the disk is beginning to 
fail - especially if more and more sectors show up as bad over time.

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/showthread.php?t=504768

> So before i reinstall the system, i have some questions here:
> 
> Is the fdisk on the fedora core 6 DVD an old one?
# fdisk -v {fc6 dvd disc and updates to 2006-12-14}:
fdisk (util-linux 2.13-pre6)

dvd/Fedora/RPMS/util-linux-2.13-0.44.fc6.i386.rpm
machine updated to 2006-12-14:util-linux-2.13-0.45.1.fc6

# rpm -q --info util-linux|grep Date
Release     : 0.45.1.fc6                    Build Date: Wed 22 Nov 2006 
11:06:35 AM EST
Install Date: Thu 23 Nov 2006 07:34:31 AM EST      Build Host: 
ls20-bc1-14.build.redhat.com

> which partitioner
> should i use? How can i fix the partition table know?
back it up to some sort of removable media using:
dd if=/dev/hda of=/root/mbr-backup bs=512 count=1
then you could use a rescue disk to reapply the backup attempts to fix 
are not successful.

> Can i ignore the smartd messages or is the HD defect?
I would be making a complete copy of the disk to another drive, in case 
there is information that you want, just in case the disk goes dead.

> Please, only answer when you know an answer, not only when you guess
> it ;-)
Without more info from you I suspect you would be getting less than 
optimal advice!

DaveT.