On Tuesday 17 April 2007 12:31, Registration Account wrote:

I just had to rebuild the RPM index as it was corrupt. During the boot process the file system is clean, however another file has been corrupted 'fstab'. I understand that the file system is checked for integrity each boot, however a few other buggy things evolving corrupted files has occurred. Is there a Linux equivalent to chkdsk /? in DOS. . The Netware equivalent would be Vrepair. In other words can I initiate a file by file integrity check in Linux from the console. Many Thanks

Checking and repair are part of the same tool. The name "fsck" is, in the age of many different file systems, a cover that invokes a file system-specific check / repair program. By default, a file system checker on Unix just verifies the integrity of the file system's data structures. Only if told, via the appropriate option, do they attempt repair of any detected corruption. Naturally, repair cannot be guaranteed. And sometimes successful repair leaves file data corruption (repair generally addresses the file system indexing structures more than it does the data itself). Among the anomalies that can result are contents that are properly part of one file ending up in another, e.g. Also files sometimes have the proper size, but have portions filled with garbage or zeroes. One thing you want to do is avoid attempting application-level repair (e.g., rebuilding the RPM database) when there are lingering file system integrity problems. First get the file system intact and then start repairing / rebuilding, reinstalled or recreating lost or damaged files. Furthermore, a file system that is mounted read/write should never be checked or repaired. The check will be invalid and often indicate spurious problems and the repair will be working at cross purposes to the operating system kernel (or the file system code it contains). For all but the root file system, unmounting the file system is sufficient for conducting a check or repair. The root file system cannot be unmounted, so to manually check or repair it you must be running from another root file system, typically a rescue disc of some sort (many generic ones are available and the SuSE installation disks serve this purpose, too). Good luck.

Scott

Randall Schulz -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org