Bug#754340: Unable to run fsck manually when instructed to do so

[Bas Wijnen]

On Sat, Jul 12, 2014 at 12:59:04AM +0200, Michael Biebl wrote:
> Am 12.07.2014 00:34, schrieb Bas Wijnen:
> > When fsck failed with this message before, I could do:
> > mount / -o remount,ro
> > fsck /
> > 
> > Now, and I'm guessing this is a change on the part of systemd, that
> > first command (remount read-only) fails with the message that the file
> > system is busy.  Having no bootable computer and thus no internet, I was
> > unable to figure out what was keeping it busy, and how I was supposed to
> > stop it.  This is the information that I think should be part of the
> > "please run fsck manually"-message, because that won't work without it.
> 
> I think there is no general answer to that.
> There most likely simply was a process keeping your (root) fs busy.
> So I would have tried stopping one service after another.

I didn't start any processes.  The problem happened in fsck, at which
point no process should be allowed to write to the file system (except
fsck itself).  After failing, it gave me a rescue shell with which I
cannot remount the fs read-only.  I think whatever is keeping it busy
must have been started just before spawning that shell?  Or is it the
shell itself?

I'd be fine with stopping all services, but I'm not familiar with how to
do that either.  If this is the solution, please add that instruction to
the message.  But would services which prevent the disk from being
remounted read-only be started before fsck is finished?  The rescue
shell is part of fsck, I think(?), so nothing should have been started
after it failed.

> Do you have a /var/log/journal/ directory and is this on the root
> directory? Might be that journald kept your fs busy.

No, I don't have that.  However, I just noticed that it is on LVM,
currently running with one physical volume on one disk.  I don't think
that should prevent remounting it read-only though...

Thanks,
Bas
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