Ext4 file system corrupted

[rejoyce]

The Ext 4 file system of the partition (dev/sdb1) is corrupted. When I seek to repair this using the boot repair tool it is unable to resolve this. I admit that I don't fully understand the problem - except that I'm unable to open and use programmes. Any suggestions as to how to move forward?

[Lakshmipathi]

can you post any error messages ?

[rejoyce]

I'm back up and running - the repair tool has worked at least to some extent. I'm able to access Yast again. don't know what the glitch was but let's plow on!! Thanks Lakshmipathi for your interest. I don't know how to retrieve any infromation other than that which the repair tool informed me. If you have any suggestions as to what I should look for in case there is an underlying problem I'd love to hear from you. Thanks once again.

[Lakshmipathi]

what's the repair tool ,are you using? are you running opensuse/suse distro?

[rejoyce]

The installation repair tool on the cd. Yes it was downloaded through openSuse.
yesterday I was informed that a configuration file "/home/kirk/.kde4/share/config/knotifyrc" was not writable and that it "couldn't start ksmserver check installation"

[Lakshmipathi]

I haven't came across such error so far. but here is my thoughts , Seems like error caused by kde.
Check the file permission of /home/kirk/.kde4/share/config/knotifyrc using

ls -l

command

If it's not in write mode,change the mode using

chmod +w

or make sure config directory has appropriate permission.

chown -R kirk:kirk /home/kirk/.kde4

[Lakshmipathi]

and i don't think this error related to ext4 File system. Normally when you get ext2/ext3/ext4 file system , running fsck should resolve the issue (99% time)

[rejoyce]

Thanks for your input I'll seek to give that a go.

[gogalthorp]

The level of fsck run by the repair may not be sufficient to fix all problems. If the repair routine says it needs more you will need to run fsck from the command line. If the problem is on root you need to boot from a CD or DVD then go to the command line because you can not fix a mounted partition. You may find that repair can not piece together all the files and directories. You will find what it can not figure out in the lost and found directory for that partition.

If the damage was on the root I'd recommend reinstalling if you have anything in Lost and Found. It is impossible to hand stitch binary files back together.

The main cause of file corruption are power failures and drive failure. Though in portables it could be bounce the machine while it is writing data.

type "man fsck" before attempting a manual fix