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I have a hard drive with only Ubuntu 14.04 installed, that I want to check. However, the tutorial I read says that the hard drive has to be unmounted before I can check it.

Apparently, I can run the disk check using an Ubuntu live USB stick, so I created one. What do I do from here?


UPDATE:

I managed to get to this screen:

boot screen


UPDATE 2

I selected the "fsck" option. It brought up a window with this message:

"Continuing will remount your / filesystem in read/write mode and mount any other filesystem defined in /etc/fstab.
Do you wish to continue?"
(Yes) / (No)

Choosing (No) just took me back to the menu, so I chose (Yes), and it opened a log screen of some sort with the following content:

fsck from util-linux 2.20.1
fsck from util-linux 2.20.1
fsck.fat 3.0.26 (2014-03-07)
/dev/sda1: 6 files, 864/130812 clusters
/dev/sda2: Inodes that were part of a corrupted orphan linked list found.

/dev/sda2: UNEXPECTED INCONSISTENCY: RUN fsck MANUALLY.
      (i.e., without -a or -p options)
mountall: fsck / [807] terminated with status 4
mountall: Filesystem has errors: /
mountall: Skipping mounting / since Plymouth is not available

Finished, please press ENTER

I pressed ENTER and it once again took me back to the menu. I tried selecting "fsck" again, but now I got this message:

"The option you selected requires your filesystem to be in read-only mode. 
Unfortunately another option you selected earlier, made you exit this mode.
The easiest way of getting back in read-only mode is to reboot your system."

Was this supposed to happen? Was the readout in the log screen the disk check?

1 Answer 1

2

A more easy way is to tell ubuntu to check the filesystem on next boot. You can do this by touching /forcefsck (have a look here):

sudo touch /forcefsck

Another way is to pres ESC on boot while Grub is loading. You will get the Grub-boot-menu (have a look here). Herein you can choose to boot the recovery console. In the recovery console you can ask ubuntu to fsck all disks.

These both methods have the advantage that they working with encrypted partitions, too.

Doing a fsck from a live-system (USB-stick) requires more knowledge about finding disks and partitions and maybe about open encrypted partitions.

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  • I got to a recovery menu screen with a shell open at the bottom. I added a picture of the screen above. Is that shell the correct place to enter that code?
    – Jeff Caros
    Mar 13, 2016 at 17:48
  • yes it is, don't open the root-shell, just select the option "fsck - Check all file system" - fsck stands for File System ChecK. You can leave the shell by typeing "exit" and press the return key
    – cmks
    Mar 13, 2016 at 19:54
  • I added the results under "Update 2". Was this supposed to happen?
    – Jeff Caros
    Mar 13, 2016 at 22:46
  • Your filesystem @ /dev/sda2 has inconsistencies. Reboot and start the recovery console again. This time choose "root" to get a console. Within the console run "fsck /dev/sda2". fsck will ask you how to proceed with that inconsitencies.
    – cmks
    Mar 13, 2016 at 23:49
  • If it asks "Force rewrite", do you think I should answer yes?
    – Jeff Caros
    Mar 13, 2016 at 23:55

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