[ubuntu-in] Information on two software

[Ninad Pundalik]

Hi,

>> 1. My laptop HD seems to be failing, atleast that what Karmic is
>> reporting "DISK HAS TOO MANY BAD SECTORS" - so any idea what software
>> i could use to find out what is happening and maybe rectify the
>> problem. fsck is too confusing to use and have not been able to find a
>> GUI for it.
>
> fsck is not to be run manually. It is run every 30 boots in Ubuntu.
> fsck is a program to check file system consistency. There is nothing
> fsck can do about failing hard disks.

@Onkar: I might have to correct you there. The fsck man page says that
it can be used to check and repair a filesystem, so Ram will be able
to give it a shot.  I'm not exactly sure, but unless it's a major
hardware damage, fsck _should_ be able to repair his disk correctly.
And yes, the once in 30 reboots is just a safety feature that has been
added.  We can run fsck anytime we want, provided we take precautions
:)

@Ram: If you are sure that it is not a hardware issue, please read the
manpage for fsck.<your fs type>.  Or, you can ping back to the list
with details about your partition and we could give you a list of
options to use.  Remember, that fsck must _not_ be run on a mounted
partition, and fsck will print an error saying the same thing, unless
forced.  The way I've used fsck has been this.

1. I re-boot into recovery mode, and select the root prompt. ( yes, I
do have a root a/c, which I use only for such system recovery work.
Otherwise, sudo -i works perfectly :) )
2. Then, I unmount all partitions other than the root partition.
('umount -a' will do that, and print an error that root (/) and tmp
(/tmp) partitions can't be unmounted)
3. Re-mount root in read only mode ( 'mount / -o remount,ro' ).  There
is no need to remount /tmp, as it's a pseudo-filesystem, and in most
Ubuntu installs, is a part of / aka root :)
4. Run fsck on each partition that I want to check individually.  You
would want to read the manpage, and give filesystem specific options.
For this, research before rebooting, and note down the options you
want to use on a piece of paper :).
5. After fsck completes, reboot with the normal mode.

Please remember, that fsck can damage your partitions, if not used
properly, and if you don't feel confident, ask back to the mailing
list.  If not me, someone else will surely be able to explain and help
you through your doubts.  And if possible, make a backup of your data,
because hardware issues with the drive cannot be solved using fsck, or
any other software tool.

@All: Please correct me if I've been doing something wrong in this process. :)

Ninad S. Pundalik
http://twitter.com/ni_nad
http://ninadpundalik.co.cc/blog
GPG Key Fingerprint: 2DF7 B856 C75E C9F9 0504 C0EF D456 1946 7C45 2C69