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In a recent reboot of Ubuntu, which failed, I get the message to run fsck manually. How do I do so. I may have a bad HD sector, and it may be easier to reinstall Ubuntu. I'm a newbie, so bear with me.

Lou Hudson
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  • See this, but use your ext4 partition(s) not sdb2 as in example. http://askubuntu.com/questions/642504/ubuntu-14-04-is-not-booting-normaly-after-a-manual-hard-boot/642789#642789 – oldfred Feb 10 '18 at 19:52

2 Answers2

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Note: For 18.04 and newer, see my new instructions.

To check the file system on your Ubuntu partition...

  • boot to the GRUB menu
  • choose Advanced Options
  • choose Recovery mode
  • choose Root access
  • at the # prompt, type sudo fsck -f /
  • repeat the fsck command if there were errors
  • type reboot

If for some reason you can't do the above...

  • boot to a Ubuntu Live DVD/USB
  • start gparted and determine which /dev/sdaX is your Ubuntu EXT4 partition
  • quit gparted
  • open a terminal window
  • type sudo fsck -f /dev/sdaX # replacing X with the number you found earlier
  • repeat the fsck command if there were errors
  • type reboot
Daniel T
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heynnema
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  • Hey. And what if fsck is to be performed on /dev/mapper/ubuntu--vg-root? Is this answer still applicable? – Zero Jun 09 '19 at 14:20
  • @Duos Good question. The answer is, yes it is. – heynnema Jun 09 '19 at 14:47
  • Then I don't know. I was dropped into an initramfs prompt on boot with the message dev/mapper/ubuntu--vg-root contains a file system with errors, check forced. I executed fsck /dev/mapper/ubuntu--vg-root -y and I now have an infinite scroll of random numbers all over my screen. What's this mean? – Zero Jun 09 '19 at 14:51
  • Before I executed the previous command, I first tried fsck /dev/sda1 and the report was that it was clean. Rebooting the computer did nothing but return me back to initramfs. Doing the same inside Recovery Mode has no effect as well. – Zero Jun 09 '19 at 14:58
  • @Duos Didn't I help you with a network issue recently? If fsck is giving you a scrolling list of numbers, you may have a big hard disk problem. Please start a new question with all of the information, and include a screenshot/picture of the scrolling list for me to see. What started all of this (answer this in the new question). Flag me there with a comment starting with "@heynnema" so I'll get notified. – heynnema Jun 09 '19 at 15:00
  • Here it is: https://askubuntu.com/questions/1149828/infinite-scrolling-random-numbers-on-screen-after-running-fsck-manually – Zero Jun 09 '19 at 16:13
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I'm a little late, but if anyone else reaches this thread, here's what worked for me: The error screen said something about an orphaned linked list at dev/mmcblk0p2 and that I had to run fsck manually. The simple solution is to do exactly what it says: run fsck on the corrupted filesystem.

fsck /dev/mmcblk0p2

This will prompt you through the fixing of the filesystem easily and smoothly.

Pilot6
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christian_js
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