224

The title might not be as descriptive as I would like it to be but couldn't come up with a better one.

My server's file system went into Read-only. And I don't understand why it does so and how to solve it.

I can SSH into the server and when trying to start apache2 for example I get the following :

username@srv1:~$ sudo service apache2 start
[sudo] password for username:
sudo: unable to open /var/lib/sudo/username/1: Read-only file system
 * Starting web server apache2                                                                                                                                                                                                               (30)Read-only file system: apache2: could not open error log file /var/log/apache2/error.log.
Unable to open logs
Action 'start' failed.
The Apache error log may have more information.

When I try restarting the server I get :

username@srv1:~$ sudo shutdown -r now
[sudo] password for username:
sudo: unable to open /var/lib/sudo/username/1: Read-only file system

Once I restart it manually it just start up without any warning or message saying something is wrong.

I hope somebody could point me into the right direction to resolve this issue.

6
  • 1
    I recommend to @John to change the answer to the last posted answer by Bibhas as it actually works where the other answers are not helpful at all actually. Nov 9, 2014 at 6:30
  • For MicroSD: askubuntu.com/questions/213889/… Aug 20, 2016 at 14:33
  • 1
    Everyone, this question is for a server, not a PC. If you have this issue on your dual boot PC, Please check The **quick start** option can be found in **power options** in the control panel of Windows. I'm having the same issue with an Ubuntu on AWS
    – vanduc1102
    Jul 14, 2018 at 8:35
  • I have this problem too, and non of solutions work fo me i use ubuntu 18.04 , and i don't know what makes this happened , I should restart my system and then it show me page that contain (initramfs) there when I run fsck /dev/sda1 -y and reboot os work and again after 30 minutes to 1 hour problem happens.
    – Parisa.H.R
    Aug 7, 2021 at 3:10
  • if disk is NTFS and used by Windows - run from it shutdown /f /r /t 0, it helped for me
    – CodeBy
    Jul 8, 2022 at 14:07

20 Answers 20

125

The filesystem will usually go into read-only while the system is running if there is a filesystem consistency issue. This is specified in fstab as errors=remount-ro and will occur when a FS access fails or an emergency read-only remount is requested via Alt+SysRq+U. You can run:

sudo fsck -Af -M

to force a check of all filesystems. As one of the other answers states, looking at dmesg is also very helpful.

Edit: Don't forget the -M on the command-line.

NOTE: As mentioned by Bibhas in his answer: If fsck gets stuck after its version banner:

$ sudo fsck -Af -M
fsck from util-linux 2.20.1

you may want to try using the EXT4-specific fsck

$ sudo fsck.ext4 -f /dev/sda1

Provided the partition in question /dev/sda1 was an ext4 filesystem.

20
  • 5
    I think you should not force a filesystem check on other r/w mounted filesystems. That will potentially corrupt your data. Add the -M option to skip mounted filesystems. (-M Do not check mounted filesystems and return an exit code of 0 for mounted filesystems. from FSCK(8))
    – gertvdijk
    Jun 24, 2013 at 18:35
  • 41
    This doesn't help, I just get the same error when trying to run that command. sudo: unable to open /var/lib/sudo/kuplack/1: Read-only file system fsck from util-linux 2.20.1 Dec 8, 2013 at 21:47
  • 3
    Yea for me I needed to remove -M since /dev/sda1 was mounted, and to make your life easier, add -Afy (The y means answer yes to all prompts)... I play fast and loose with VM's so I'm usually ok with this type of solution, but if this is unbacked up hardware, might take a different approach and read dmesg. Jul 19, 2016 at 21:57
  • 3
    @DarshanChaudhary The -M flag causes fsck to skip mounted filesystems. See the fsck (8) manpage.
    – nanofarad
    Mar 1, 2017 at 19:07
  • 5
    This actually did end up corrupting my filesystem :(
    – Blairg23
    Jul 4, 2019 at 1:44
67

The answer by hexafraction didn't work for me. Every time I tried executing sudo fsck -Af -M it just showed

$ sudo fsck -Af -M
fsck from util-linux 2.20.1

and nothing else. No error or anything. For me, booting into a live disc and executing this worked -

sudo fsck.ext4 -f /dev/sda1

Provided the partition in question /dev/sda1 was an ext4 filesystem.

5
  • 6
    -M means not to do mounted filesystems. Your filesystem /dev/sda1 was mounted (I'm guessing at /). So it was skipped.
    – dalore
    Apr 13, 2015 at 14:41
  • 3
    sudo fsck.ext4 -f /dev/sda1 works. Still a restart needs.
    – efkan
    Jan 27, 2017 at 15:09
  • 1
    It worked for me on ubuntu 16.04.3 Thank you Oct 25, 2017 at 14:39
  • Thanks! This worked! :) Dec 31, 2020 at 3:51
  • Thank you for this: I urgently need to pull files from my problematic installation and this helped tremendously! Incidentally, I ran fsck.ext4 via my "(Initramfs)" shell and it worked perfectly! Jan 7, 2022 at 5:47
59

Here is the command that solved my problem :

mount -o remount /

better than a reboot or sudo fsck -Af

8
  • 26
    Not better if the OS made your disk read-only to prevent possible corruption. Feb 11, 2013 at 17:24
  • 5
    Not only that - only root will be able to remount the filesystem and sudo isn't going to work if the filesystem is read-only. Aug 30, 2013 at 7:21
  • 15
    Doesn't help, I just get the same message: sudo: unable to open /var/lib/sudo/kuplack/1: Read-only file system mount: cannot remount block device /dev/sda2 read-write, is write-protected Dec 8, 2013 at 21:49
  • 3
    o yes this one worked.
    – R T
    Jan 6, 2016 at 5:04
  • 10
    mount: cannot remount /dev/sda8 read-write, is write-protected Jun 5, 2018 at 3:57
36

If you want to force your root filesystem to remount as rw, you can do the following.

mount -o remount,rw /
5
  • 1
    this was solved my problem, I use hetzner cloud with 160gb ssd, never had such error before Feb 2, 2019 at 22:52
  • 1
    Awesome brother 💪 May 6, 2020 at 10:38
  • This worked for me, when my off-brand mp3 player switched to "read-only" all of a sudden
    – Sarato
    Mar 21, 2021 at 3:18
  • 4
    I get mount: /: cannot remount /dev/sda2 read-write, is write-protected.
    – flm
    Aug 7, 2021 at 8:50
  • this solved my problem i remount the partition only aka sudo mount -o remount, rw 0A4819AC48393
    – Fathy
    Mar 15, 2022 at 5:30
17

Try running dmesg | grep "EXT4-fs error" to see if you have any issues related to the filesystem / journaling system itself. I would recommend you to restart your system, then. Also, sudo fsck -Af answer by ObsessiveSSOℲ won't hurt.

12

Note that sometimes this can be caused by the computer forgetting the system time - disk check fails because the dates in the journal are in THE FUTURE!

Setting the BIOS time (and checking the BIOS battery) fixed this problem for me, without having to do any disk recovery.

2
  • Welcome to Ask Ubuntu! I recommend editing this answer to expand it with specific details about how to do this. (See also How do I write a good answer? for general advice about what sorts of answers are considered most valuable on Ask Ubuntu.) Feb 23, 2016 at 8:50
  • I am fairly certain this is happening to me right now, given that my computer told me it forgot its time this morning.
    – nomen
    Jan 22, 2018 at 4:14
8

If you're dual booting your machine with Ubuntu and Windows together and this issue occurs,it's because Windows changes the filesystem,in that case this might do the trick. Try disabling fast startup

Control Panel > Hardware and Sounds > Power Options > (in the left) Choose what closing the lid does > Change settings that are currently unavailable > Untick 'Turn on fast startup'

Now booting into Ubuntu will solve the issue. Hope this helps!

https://youtu.be/KJ-0KPZhAFo

0
8

If you have the graphical user interface go to the disk application, select the drive with the issue, click on the gears icon and choose the option Repair Filesystem. In less than a second the problem is fixed.

enter image description here

3
  • 1
    This answer should have more upvotes. It is the most failsafe option, that requires far less understanding from the user. Thank you.
    – kyriakosSt
    Feb 13, 2022 at 11:30
  • That deleted all my files... Don't try if you don't know what you are doing Oct 14, 2023 at 21:17
  • This worked for me. Dec 11, 2023 at 17:45
7

(Deleted previous answer)

Edit: The main problem was on the windows side. After updating my Windows 10, the 'quick start' option automatically got enabled. On disabling that option again, and then again re-starting the machine, the problem went away. Windows 10 gave me heavy headache for days :(

The 'quick start' option can be found in 'power options' in the control panel. Disable that!!! :)

3
  • Only one that worked. At the cost of startup speed.
    – NelsonGon
    Jul 4, 2019 at 12:26
  • Didn't worked but I think windows is causing this issue
    – Heisenberg
    Jan 13, 2021 at 4:40
  • 1
    Why the hell would Windows (which knows nothing about ext4) make an ext4 FS remount to read only? The only inconsistent filesystem should be the NTFS one Windows is living on... Oct 3, 2022 at 15:54
4

If you dual boot ubuntu alongside windows 10 it's probably windows 10's fast start-up that's holding onto your filesystem , it doesnt unmount your hard disks properly. to fix this you need to boot into windows 10

  1. Start > Power Settings
  2. click on Additional power setting on the right
  3. click on choose what thepower buttons do on the left
  4. clock on change settings that are currently unavailable
  5. unmark turn on fast-startup
  6. save changes and then reboot into ubuntu everything will work fine!
1
  • Oh, this is perfect.
    – Aleks
    Aug 26, 2021 at 22:16
4

For me,Rebooting a system solving this issue

sudo reboot

as he mentioned about it.

Remember

as System Administrator rebooting should be the latest Solution

2
  • 2
    ¡CAUTION! I was fixing a remote server and it didn't turn on after reboot which made things way harder, I recommend testing other solutions before trying to rebbot specially if you're not physically with the computer. For the first time in the engineering world, turning it off and on again was a big problem instead of a solution :(
    – Mark E
    Jul 19, 2021 at 17:28
  • @MarkE Rebooting Against Availability so should be the latest solution
    – Zaman Oof
    Sep 30, 2021 at 10:41
3

Usually linux puts your filesystems in read only when errors occur, especially errors with the disk or the filesystem itself, errors like a wrong journal entry for example.

You better check your dmesg for disk related errors.

Google is full of discussion about this and you can pick the ones that is closer to your configuration, but a look at dmesg is usually enough.

2
  • What should one look at / grep for in dmesg output? Mar 8, 2013 at 23:47
  • Unfortunately if you opted to encrypt your home folder, dmesg is bound to be full of useless errors from ecryptfs. Aug 30, 2013 at 7:22
2

If you were in situations that can not use live disc, e.g. you are remotely ssh into your system, you can still using the command that @Bibhas had answered:

sudo fsck.ext4 -f /current/filesystem/mount/point

It will prompt for fixing your filesystem error. You also need to reboot your system remotely.

1
  • This saved me! Thank you!
    – easyyu
    Feb 4, 2023 at 15:07
1

In my case it was down to RAID 1 stabilizing after the initial installation. I have /boot and / on s/w RAID1. Having left the system overnight and rebooted, everything is working fine. Richard

1
1

It looks like some mounted files have got corrupted, and as a result, the kernel has set the file system to RO to prevent further damage. To find which file system is corrupted, we could run:

cat /proc/mounts | grep -i ro

The output would be similar to the below:

proc /proc proc rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime 0 0
/dev/sda1 / ext4 ro,relatime,data=ordered 0 0
tmpfs /sys/fs/cgroup tmpfs ro,nosuid,nodev,noexec,mode=755 0 0

One of the solutions for this issue could be to remount the corrupted file system.

1
  • Thank you, it helped me!
    – easyyu
    Feb 4, 2023 at 15:06
1

I have had this problem on my computer for over 1 year and tried everything to solve the problem. Suddenly Linux goes into read-only mode. If you are editing something you are unable to save and have to execute fsck command and reset the computer. The computer is also very slow and freezing all the time. I removed the dual boot and left only Ubuntu, upgraded Ubuntu from version 18.04 LTS to version 20.04 LTS, and it didn't work. What was crucial to solving the problem is the use of the dmesg command. The experience didn't work out for me, just this command. The function of this command is to monitor the computer.

In my case, the problem was related to the SSD incompatibility with Ubuntu. I used HDD and after I switched to SSD the problem came up. The problem was solved by updating the SSD firmware, which was only possible by partitioned Windowns, because Kingston does not have the program to update firmware through Linux. I also installed the dual boot Windowns and Linux, first installing Windows over the entire SSD, then deallocating space through Windowns and installing Ubuntu, but it is very unlikely that this was the solution to the problem.

1
  • this was kind of similar for me too. Jun 1, 2021 at 10:54
0

Check if you have any faulty hardware.I got this error due to a hardisk loosening. Ran mount -o remount,rw / and it worked fine.

0

I am using the 18.04 LTS release and what I did was, first I unmounted my damaged drives then I went into “Disks” app by seaching in the dash. From there I selected the drive which was damaged. Make sure it is unmounted else it won’t work. In the options menu (the little gear shape), and clicked on “repair file system”. Boom! Worked like a charm.

0

This happens to my laptop quite often as it hangs after sometime and normal shutdown is not possible and I have to hard power off causing damage to my disk

Steps

  1. Use sudo dmesg --level=crit,err to find out which disk say (/dev/sda3) has the problem.

Example output

[ 8696.776775] EXT4-fs error (device sda3): ext4_journal_check_start:83: comm ThreadPoolForeg: Detected aborted journal
[ 8696.986946] EXT4-fs (sda3): Remounting filesystem read-only
  1. Use sudo blkid /dev/sda3 to get the UUID of the disk
sudo blkid /dev/sda3
/dev/sda3: LABEL="home" UUID="7a9689e4-90d9-496f-b889-c4f0ee389798" BLOCK_SIZE="4096" TYPE="ext4" PARTLABEL="home" PARTUUID="5472ae83-2084-4fa1-b1dc-0593d9519d17"

  1. Edit sudo vi /etc/fstab and comment out that UUID so that it does not mount on bootup.
#UUID=7a9689e4-90d9-496f-b889-c4f0ee389798  /home  ext4  noatime,errors=remount-ro  0  0

This is needed because fsck does not work if the disk is mounted. Fortunately, in my case, the disk is mounted to /home. I am not sure if the disk is mounted to the root. If so this may not work and you may have to use a boot CD or boot USB to do the next commands

  1. sudo reboot and when it comes up run sudo fsck.ext4 -y -f /dev/sda3
  2. Uncomment the commented-out drive from fstab (undo step 3 )

reboot again

-1

It's misconfigured boot settings (try mounting / as ext2) not drive or partition physical error.

dmesg | grep "error" gave me:

ext3-fs (sda2): error: couldn't mount because of unsupported optional features (240) 
ext2-fs (sda1): error: couldn't mount because of unsupported optional features (240) 
ext4-fs (sda2): mounted file system with ordered data mode: opts: (null)

It mounted / as read only due to the fstab error=mount-ro directive.

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