How to check partitions (fsck)

[slender]

Hi,

I have some suspicions about my file systems. I would like to check all or some of them so I would really need some step by step howtos? Only things I know is that sudo root is command for root user and fsck has something to do with filesystems checking and there should be some unmounting and also that i have at least these file systems:

root / 256MB
space for software installations etc.
/home 2GB
Nokia N900
/home/user/MyDocs 27GB

Any help is appreciated.

[Rob1n]

The only one you can easily do is MyDocs, and the simplest way to do this is probably to connect to the PC in mass storage mode, then do a check on the virtual drive.

The other two you can't unmount in normal usage, so are difficult to check. You could probably insert a fsck statement into the startup scripts to check /home, but this risks locking up the device at boot time. The rootfs would be even trickier (assuming there is actually a fsck tool for ubifs).

[slender]

Is it possible to turn off my device, connect to pc with some linux distro and do fsck to those ext3 filesystems from PC?

[Fargus]

Originally Posted by slender

Is it possible to turn off my device, connect to pc with some linux distro and do fsck to those ext3 filesystems from PC?

You need to run the OS to expose it to the PC. Thing is you only get part of the filesystem exposed.

[gidoca]

Just an idea: what about booting some kind of a rescue system off a microSD?

[Rob1n]

There's only /home which is ext3 (rootfs is ubifs), and I'm pretty sure that won't work - when you connect to the PC, it just makes the MyDocs folder available (and memory card, if installed).

[beli]

You can prevent your phone of mounting /home at boot time by commenting the "/bin/mount /home" rule in /etc/event.d/rcS-late

So to check your /home partition
- comment the mount line in /etc/event.d/rcS-late
- reboot
- run fsck
- uncomment the mount line again
- reboot

[floffe]

Have you tested that it boots properly without this line? Remember that pretty much everything is run as the user "user", and all the config files for this user are on /home.

[beli]

You have to do it as root ... also be careful not to change any other lines since it could break your system

And it works, just did it today

[Artemio]

A word of warning. I tried this and the phone reboots constantantly. I cannot ssh either. And yes, I am sure I just commented that line.


EDIT: fo rthis to work you have to enable r&d mode and have the reboot disabled.