[CLUE-Talk] getting stuck and fixing it.

[Timothy C. Klein]

Yikes!

Linux doesn't crash regularly like Windows, at least not in my
experience.  If this is a brand new machine, I would look very closely
at your hardware.  Any bios updates on the motherboard manufacturers
website?  Any kernel logs that might help decide what happended? (the
files in /var/log/)?  There is a program called memtest (and memtest86)
that will test your RAM for bad chips.  I would look into stuff like
this first.  I have a motherboard that will crash if I run a kernel with
USB enabled.  Come to think of it, it is an Athlon system (not T-bird
though), with the AMD 750 chipset.  And my Dad's Windows machine with an
Abit KT7 (Via KX133 chips) had USB problems.  Hmm, maybe USB problems
would be worth looking into...?

As far as your scandisk question, the kernel will automatically check
your disks if the disk is marked 'dirty.'  It will stop if it runs into
so many errors it feels it wants your guidance.  It should drop you into
single-user mode, you may or may not need the root password to log in.
Once it lets you in (with disks mounted read only), run e2fsck /dev/hdxy
where x is the drive letter (a if it is the first), and y is the
parition number (1 if it is the first).  Pretty much tell it yes to
everything it asks you.  You may have to do this for each of your file
systems if you have more than one partion or hard drive.  And this
assumes you have ext2 filesystems (seems likely).

HTH 

Tim

On Tue, Feb 06, 2001 at 05:07:46PM -0700, Steven & Julia Hulse wrote:
> changing themes. My question is how do I safely unlock my PC without
> destroying Linux? The only thing I could do is just hit the reset button, (I
> know that's probably not what I should do thus the question.), and then it
> reboots and apparently wants me to run something like scandisk but to be
> perfectly hones, I have no clue! At that point I can't even get Linux to
> boot, it just sits on an error message and a prompt.
> 
> Thanks
> Steve Hulse
> 
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> 

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== Timothy Klein       || And what rough beast                   ==
== teece at hypermall.net || Its hour come round at last            ==
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