Power outage now my server asks for fck, what to do?

[Robert Heller]

At Mon, 04 Jan 2021 14:05:15 +0100 bo.berglund at gmail.com, "Ubuntu user technical support,  not for general discussions" <ubuntu-users at lists.ubuntu.com> wrote:

> 
> We had a power outage here and when power was restored it came in a
> short burst then disappeared and after a little while came back and
> stayed on.
> 
> But now my Ubuntu 18.04 LTS server will not start up... :(
> 
> I have now connected an old VGA monitor and a USB keyboard to the
> system.
> I had to a power cycle the system because nothing showed up on the
> screen, and then I can see that it starts running with a lot of
> commands flowing across the screen.
> But then it stops with a message:
> 
> /dev/sda1: UNEXPECTED INCONSISTENCY; RUN fck MANUALLY.
> (i.e. without -a or -p options)
> fck exited with status code 4
> done
> Failure: File system check of the root fiile system failed
> The root filesystem on /dev/sda1 requires a manual fck
> 
> BusyBox v1.27.2 (Ubuntu 1:1.27.2-2ubuntu3.3) built-in shell (ash)
> Enter 'help' for list a of built-in commands
> 
> (initramfs) [  191.223965] usb 2-4: new......
> (A bunch of hardware discovery lines follow)
> 
> 
> At the time of the power loss the system was performing 3 video
> downloads to disk, so presumably such an operation was interrupted by
> the power loss.
> 
> What can I do now?
> When I type help I get output showing a number of commands which do
> not include the fck command...

What commands are listed?  Is e2fsck listed?

It might be possible to manually mount the root file system readonly and leave
you at a single-user shell -- on all of the Linux systems *I* have ever used
this would happen automatically. I don't know about Ubuntu. I have not used
Ubuntu long enough on the bare metal to have encounted this sort of issue. Try
exiting from the busybox shell and see what happens.  If you are able to get 
the root FS mounted readonly, then typing:

e2fsck /dev/sda1

will do the fs check.  Generally typing 'y' to all of the questions will work, 
unless the questions go on forever.

You might need to boot off a "rescue" disk or USB stick.

> 
> This is not the first time I have had a power outage but it is the
> first time it has not started up after power was returned.
> 

Consider these options:

1) Get a UPS!!!

2) Consider setting your server with a RAID array for its system disk 
(mirroring).

> Please advice.
> 
> 

-- 
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