Arch Linux

Schirase

Member

Registered: 2010-02-14

Posts: 6

[SOLVED] "The superblock could not be read..."

Good Evening.
In the beginning, I want to apologise if my English isn't as correct and comprehensible as I want it to be.
I am rather clueless Linux user with penchant for learning. I have used Slackware for some time, but I wanted to try out Arch because of it's superior package management, rolling release system and minimalism. I read through installation guides, and performed basic installation using 2009.08 CD without any problems. When I tried to boot into my new system I got following message:

:Mounting Root Read-only  [DONE]
:Checking Filesystems  [BUSY]
/dev/hda1:

and then

The superblock could not be read or does not describe a correct ext2 filesystem. If the device is valid and it really contains an ext2 
filesystem (and not swap or ufs or something else), then the superblock is corrupt and you might try running e2fsck with an alternate superblock:
e2fsck -b -8193 <device>

and finally

FILESYSTEM CHECK FAILED
Please repair manually and reboot. Note that the root file system is currently mounted read-only. To remount it read-write type:
mount -n -o remount,rw /
When you exit the maintenance shell the system will reboot automatically.

I tried to run fsck, of course, as well as e2fsck or remounting / read-write but I always got the second message "The superblock could not be read... etc.".
My partitioning scheme is kinda tricky, because I make no distinction beetween production and testing machine. What is interesting, when I wanted to look at it using cfdisk from my indispensable Knoppix DVD I got something like:

FATAL ERROR: Bad primary partition 0:
Partition ends in the final partial cylinder.
Press any key to exit cfdisk.

But when I tried with root privileges it worked, and my 80GB hard drive looks something like that:

hda1      Primary Linux ext3 (/)
hda2 Boot Primary NTFS
hda3      Primary Linux
hda5      Logical W95 FAT32
hda6      Logical BeOS fs
hda7      Logical Linux ext2 (boot)
hda8      Logical Linux ReiserFS (tmp)
hda9      Logical Linux ReiserFS (usr)
hda10     Logical Linux ReiserFS (var)
hda11     Logical Linux ext3 (home)
hda12     Logical Linux Swap/Solaris (swap)

Only hda1, hda7, hda8, hda9, hda10, hda11 and hda12 are part of my Arch installation. I'm currently booting Windows XP through GRUB from NTFS partition (hda2) too.
Does anyone know how to make my Arch working installation?

Last edited by Schirase (2010-07-14 13:14:03)

Schirase

Member

Registered: 2010-02-14

Posts: 6

Re: [SOLVED] "The superblock could not be read..."

My bad, I actually didn't read Begginers' Guide very carefully. I didn't realize that setting this UUIDs in fstab is so important. Now my fstab looks something like that (mind that this is slightly different partitioning scheme):

# /etc/fstab: static file system information
#
# <file system>                           <dir>      <type>   <options>            <dump> <pass>
devpts                                    /dev/pts   devpts   defaults              0      0
shm                                       /dev/shm   tmpfs    nodev,nosuid          0      0

/dev/cdrom                                /media/cd  auto     ro,user,noauto,unhide 0      0
/dev/dvd                                  /media/dvd auto     ro,user,noauto,unhide 0      0
#/dev/fd0                                  /media/fl  auto     user,noauto           0      0

UUID=7a6e9456-69d4-4346-bf4d-803e5f61f100 /          ext3     defaults,noatime      0      1 #/dev/hda5
UUID=bf4e4d66-2658-4e39-b1f8-b84cc157ba72 /boot      ext2     defaults              0      2 #/dev/hda6
UUID=d3a5e92f-454e-47f9-8bfa-86804a322e55 /tmp       reiserfs defaults,notail       0      2 #/dev/hda7
UUID=5333292d-4f3d-45a9-aa44-9df8c930244b /usr       reiserfs defaults,notail       0      2 #/dev/hda8
UUID=bb25bd08-eeaa-4732-93a6-87e238c06029 /var       reiserfs defaults,notail       0      2 #/dev/hda9
UUID=38298476-ea3d-4d15-a5d2-8c221a20ebe8 swap       swap     defaults              0      0 #/dev/hda10
UUID=de1d9d94-09ef-4429-b63e-fddea5e81195 /home      ext3     defaults,noatime      0      2 #/dev/hdb1

and I am happily using Arch right now. However, I have got strange non-critical issues with partitions and disks which I explained in http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php? … 82#p791582.