New to Linux - Problem with Filesystem Check after power outage

[JT4]

Hi

I am very new to linux, and I have a question regarding the filesystem check (fsck). The power recently went out and when I tried to restart linux the following error appears:

*/dev/sda1 contains file system w/errors, check forced

it then goes on to say..

*An error occured during the file system check. Dropping you to a shell; the system will reboot when you leave the shell. Give root password for maintenance (or type Control-D to continue)

I wasn't sure what to do, but checked some other online forums and they suggested running fsck manually - so I typed in the root password - and used the command, "fsck -A -V ; echo == $? ==" it then gave the following message

*WARNING!!! Running e2fsck on a mounted filesystem may cause SEVERE filesystem damage
*Would you like to continue (y/n)

Again, I wasn't sure what to do so i just checked no. I then manually turned off the computer and was prompted at the beginning to press Alt-3. I was brought to another screen and it informed me one of the drives was degraded and suggested rebuilding the array. I tried doing this, but it still brings me back to the original error of, "/dev/sda1 contains file system w/errors, check forced," and the process continues.

Also, when I tried to rebuild the array, I didn't backup any of the data on our home directory before doing this (which was probably a big mistake). After being prompted to type the root password, I was able to give the ls command and look at all the directories...the home directory where our data was stored was empty and I am afraid I may have lost some information. Is there a possibility that data was lost when I was trying to rebuild using the old drives?

Any insight would be greatly appreciated.

[MikeTbob]

Hello and Welcome.
First of all, do not run fsck on a mounted drive, ever. It's a good way to hose your data.
The best advice I can give you at this point is to say that you should get a LiveCD of any version or distro, any one should work. Boot up the LiveCD and perform your operations from there. You will probably need to use sudo or login as root, you can view your partitions with:

fdisk -l

That's a lowercase L and not a 1.
Try checking the partitions, one by one. You can skip check the /swap partition.

fsck -v /dev/sda1

Use the -a option to automatically repair.

fsck -va /dev/sda1

See the man pages for more detailed help and check Google also.

man fsck

[Lakshmipathi]

Agree.Don't run fsck on mounted file system.If its not possible to umount the drive then use Live-CD or Fedora/Ubuntu CD go to recovery mode and try fsck from there.