Fixing File System Errors When fsck Fails
Sometimes when fsck
runs during startup, it encounters an error that prevents the system from fully booting until you fix the issue by running fsck
manually. This error might occur when Photon OS is the operating system for a VM running an appliance.
If fsck
fails when the computer boots and an error message says to run fsck manually, you can troubleshoot by restarting the VM, altering the GRUB edit menu to enter emergency mode before Photon OS fully boots, and running fsck
.
Perform the following steps:
Take a snapshot of the virtual machine.
Restart the virtual machine running Photon OS.
When the Photon OS splash screen appears as it restarts, type the letter
e
quickly to go to theGNU GRUB
edit menu.Note: You must type
e
quickly as Photon OS reboots quickly. Also, in VMware vSphere or VMware Workstation Pro, you might have to give the console focus by clicking in its window before it will register input from the keyboard.In the
GNU GRUB
edit menu, go to the end of the line that starts withlinux
, add a space, and then add the following code exactly as it appears below:systemd.unit=emergency.target
Type
F10
.In the bash shell, run one of the following commands to fix the file system errors, depending on whether
sda1
orsda2
represents the root file system:e2fsck -y /dev/sda1
or
e2fsck -y /dev/sda2
Restart the virtual machine. If the virtual machine fails to boot and finds any error then follow the steps below to recover.
Log in to the root shell: Command>shell root@vc701-w4#
To know about the error, execute the following command:
journalctl -b 0 | grep -i “failed to start”
Below is output of above command:
Referring to the
Failed to start the file system check on /dev/log_vg/log
error in the screenshot above, if the partition type is logical volume, then the device mapper modules create a device-special file/dev/dm-X
to which symbolic links with the original names points to/dev/mapper/log_vg-log or /dev/log_vg/log
. Herelog_vg
is volume group andlog
is logical volume name.Execute the
lsblk
command to confirm the device type. Below is the output oflsblk
command. Herelog_vg-log
is associated with the devicesde
and typelvm
. Also, note that it is not mounted.
Execute the following command to fix the file system errors:
e2fsck /dev/log_vg/log
Restart the virtual machine.