Re: ext3 crash after RedHat 7.2 installation

[Andrew Morton <akpm zip com au>]

Andy Do wrote:
> 
> Hi everyone,
>         I've been running Redhat 7.2 (new install) for about 2 weeks now
> without any problems, but today I was not so lucky.
> My system hung while I was trying to configure the kernel-source RPM using
> 'xconfig'.

Why did it hang, I wonder.

What sort of machine is it?

> After rebooting the system, it seems that my whole ext3 file system is
> corrupted.
> I get the message:
> 
> Mounting root filesystem
> EXT3-fs: ide0(3,3):couldn't mount because of unsupported optional features
> (200 0200).
> mount: error 22 mounting ext3
> pivotroot: pivot_root(/sysroot, /sysroot/initrd_ failed: 2
> Freeing unused kernel memory: 220k freed
> Kernel panic: No init found. Try passing init= option to kernel

That's a wrecked filesystem.  There are a few machines (laptops)
which discard their writecache under some circumstances, rather
than writing it.

Hard to say, but something horrid happened...

> ...
> mke2fs /dev/hda3 =>

This creates a new, empty filesystem in the place where your
root filesystem used to live.  Sorry, but it's time to reinstall
from scratch.