Guys, I've been trying to figure this out for the last 2 months, and it's driving me nuts. I'm not extremely skilled in Linux, but I obviously know just enough to install it and then get into trouble! Ok, when I choose Linux from my bootloader (LILO) it start loading up Linux fine (my other OS is Win XP Pro and it works perfect), and once it starts going through the checklist of devices and filesystems I get an error. But I can't figure out what this error means. Here it is (sorry if this is long, but just incase I'm going to post the entire error): --------- Checking root filesystem ROOT: Unattached inode 1419323 ROOT: UNEXPECTED INCONSISTENCY; RUN fsck MANUALLY (i.e. without -a or -p options) ***An error occured during the file system check. ***Dropping you to a shell; the system will reboot when you leave the shell. Give root password for maintaince (or type Control-D for normal startup): ------ OK, does anyone know what in the world that means??? If I press Control-D it just reboots the machine. If I give the root password it then gives me a prompt, but it's not the usual command prompt, instead of just having a "#" or a ":", it has something like "Filesystem 1:" and then the next line is "Filesystem 2:" and so on. But it works like a normal command prompt though. I can type "ls" and browse around all the files or directories. But if I type "startx" it just gives me another error. I know this is complicated, but if anyone knows what's going wrong here, please let me know, b/c I'm going nuts! Any suggestions? Trust me i'll do or try anything at this point. Thank you in advance for helping (and s---, just for reading all of this!). -Mike

Ok, one more thing I should add. I just ran Partition Magic 7.0 (in Win XP Pro) which shows my linux partitions, which are a BOOT, ROOT, and SWAP partitions. I ran a "Check for errors" on each partition while in Partition Magic, and the BOOT partition had a "critial" error (the other two were fine). Here's the error it gave me: "Directory 1419323 disconnected from directory hierarchy." The part that really caught my attention was that is gave the number 1419323, which is the same error I got in the Linux command prompt while trying to boot up. Ok, so now I now (vaguely) what's wrong, but how do I fix it??? How exactly am I supposed to fix a directory disconnected from the hierarchy? Any suggestions again? Please, I'm going crazy here. At least if you have a general idea of what might be wrong, or if you know of a direction to point me in for more information on this subject, please, please let me know. Thank you once again, -Mike

the # means your in linux single mode prompt (equiv to windows safe mode) type fsck and press enter.

first, try not to use partition magic sort of thing. second...the message you got means the file system got problems. It won't continue to boot until you fix it. To fix the problem, give the root passwd as prompted, then run command fsck /dev/xxx(depends on what partition of the troubled file system residence in)...if fsck can't get the problem fixed (it is very likely), you might have to re-install Linux. If you have a boot partition to store files required for boot, you don't have to install the whole thing, just install kernel and boot load...good luck...

I just had this happen, and my admin buddy helped me fix it. Indeed, you need to use fsck /dev/xxx. My HDD is hda, with 7 partitions, hda1 - hda7. Turns out my problem was with /home. Here is where my memory is sparse: /home wasn't showing up as a directory, and that was the problem, so we moved it to home.old, then did 'mkdir home'. What I don't remember is if I did this before or after using fsck. At any rate, this fixed it, but my machine seems to be just a bit quirky yet; though the quirks regard the windowing environment, so it could be a gnome problem, not related to the boot problem at all. Finally, I don't remember if we used fsck or e2fsck, which is fsck for the ext2 filesystem. and I'm running 7.2. :jon

If you are not sure what partition number is corrupted, you could just type fsck / this will check every partition.

Wow! I really appreciate all the responses guys. Ok, so I should run fsck? Will fsck mess with my Win XP Pro partition at all? Because right now, I don't have a backup of my system and I am using my computer as a workstation for my business, and I really, really, can't afford to have Win XP go down. I don't mind screwing around with the RedHat partition or its install files b/c RedHat's not booting anyways, so what's the worst that could happen? Also, how can I find out where the problem is so I can run fsck on it? See, I'm not really sure how I assigned my HDD's and their partitions when I installed everything, so how do I know if it's hda1 or hda2 or whatever? Is there anyway to find that out? Jon Kruger, how did you know your problem was in /home? See, all I know is that my problem is in Inode 1419323, where ever that is. Also should I use e2fsck instead of fsck, b/c I obviously have Linux on an ext2 partition? Or should I just do what Tex suggested and type "fsck /" ? But then again, will that mess up things with Windows? If not, I just do that, and with some luck, maybe that will work. I don't know. But I really appreciate all the help and support you guys have shown me on this issue! Thanks again all! -Mike