Reiserfs corruption: a little help, please!

[Karl Hegbloom]

On Wed, 2005-06-15 at 20:43 -0400, Paul M. Bucalo wrote:
> Somehow I managed to corrupt a reiserfs partition. Upon boot-up, it
> tells me to use 'reiserfsck --rebuild-tree' because the problem is bad.
> I've been trying to figure out how to do this, including getting to a
> point where this can be done before mounting. I need to get this fixed
> as soon as possible. What time I have had to Google has given me nothing
> productive. I've already looked at 'reiserfs --help'. Still doesn't tell
> me how to go about to actually make it happen. Any help greatly
> appreciated.

Boot the computer, and at the grub screen, use the arrow keys to select
the "recovery mode" boot entry, then press 'e' on it.  In the next
screen, arrow down to over the 'kernel' line, press 'e' again, and at
the end of the line, type a space and then add the argument
"-b" (without the quotes).  Press 'Enter', and then 'b' to boot it.

That will drop you into a 'root' command line shell very early, before
any boot scripts have run.  The root file system should be mounted
read-only at that point, and 'reiserfsck --rebuild-tree' will probably
work then.  You have to give it the device name of your root file
system, eg: /dev/hda1

If it refuses to run because the file system is mounted, then boot a
Hoary "Live" CD, open a root shell, and do it from there.  Failing that,
try the System Rescue CD, at http://www.sysresccd.org/ or a Debian From
Scratch CD, http://people.debian.org/~jgoerzen/dfs/html/dfs.html.

-- 
Karl Hegbloom <hegbloom at pdx.edu>