[TriLUG] How to prevent? "fsck died with exit status 4"

[Jeremy Davis]

Thanks all for the feedback! This gives me some things new things to
explore.

After reading up on the file system journalling, I suspect this is missing
from AV Linux and may be causing the recovery problems after a sudden
shutdown. It may have been removed or left out to improve latency when
recording.

If filesystem journalling is not present, I wonder if working off the live
cd might be the best way to go, with an external drive for the Ardour files
etc.. Hopefully a sudden shut down would not corrupt the external drive.
On Sep 28, 2014 11:47 AM, "Joseph Mack NA3T" <jmack at wm7d.net> wrote:

> On Sun, 28 Sep 2014, Jeremy Davis wrote:
>
>  Hey folks, I've been having problems with AV Linux, which is Debian based
>> and has been tuned for low latency while recording music.
>>
>> I have installed it on a couple different computers and every so often,
>> the
>> system takes a crap and I have to reinstall. It seems to happen if the
>> computer is suddenly unplugged or the power goes out. It seems like I read
>> that this happens when logged in as super user and the system is shut down
>> with out time to close all the processes.
>>
>> I get a black screen with "fsck died with exit status 4"
>>
>
> I have no idea, and google doesn't find anything sensible either, so I'm
> going to run through some standard sanity stuff.
>
> o I assume the fsck error is on bootup, not shutdown
>
> o use a journalling filesystem (doesn't help your immediate problem, but
> is a good idea)
>
> o run smartclt -t long /dev/sd? once a week and look at the logs
>
> o the error message is unhelpful. It should tell you the problem and then
> give you the option of running fsck manually. Get a systemrescue cd and run
> fsck manually on the disk.
>
> http://www.sysresccd.org/SystemRescueCd_Homepage
>
> o the sudden crashes sound like a hardware problem. It could be anywhere.
> Start with the disk. Back it up. From the systemrescue cd, mount an
> external flash drive and run
>
> badblocks -svw /dev/your_suspect_disk -o /usb_mount_point/badblocks.out
>
> This may take a couple of days
>
> run the smartctl  test above.
>
> If this finds no errors, you're going to have to look for hardware
> problems elsewhere.
>
> restore your backup
>
>  I am curious how others on the list cope with this issue, such as
>> strategies to prevent this from happening, minimize losses, quick recovery
>> etc... I am working with music recordings so it is critical not to lose my
>> work, which is stored in files on the hard drive.
>>
>
> you do have duplicate copies of everything? Any file on only one disk is
> guaranteed of being lost. When you're doing your recording, do you save to
> an external disk as well? You should save anytime you've accumulated enough
> work, that you wouldn't want to have to recreate it.
>
> Joe
>
> --
> Joseph Mack NA3T EME(B,D), FM05lw North Carolina
> jmack (at) wm7d (dot) net - azimuthal equidistant map
> generator at http://www.wm7d.net/azproj.shtml
> Homepage http://www.austintek.com/ It's GNU/Linux!
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