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Thread ID: 93322	2008-09-11 23:00:00	Linux - sudden errors and a trip to "read only world"	personthingy (1670)	Press F1

Post ID	Timestamp	Content	User
704536	2008-09-11 23:00:00	Hello all. Long time before i've posted a question here, but this one has really got me. I'm running a Debian Lenny system. From time to time, and usually when i'm doing far too much on the machine at once things suddenly turn to custard. As things fall apart all the errors i get have the same theme "Cannot write to /anywhere as this file is "Read only" " ultimately the only way out is the big blue button on the front of the computer, as even rebooting fails due to the shutdown process grinding to a halt due to "mysql cannot write to /var/whatever as it is read only" or something to that effect. Before i get the inevitable lecture about the need to back everything i have NOW, i'll point out that the errors that suddenly accumulate refer to files on 2 separate hard drives and a network drive. I do tend to think that the chances of 3 hard drives on 2 separate machines all suddenly packing a simultaneous sad and then working fine for days is remote, and therefore it probably isn't the obvious hardware issue such faults usually point to. Any ideas?	personthingy (1670)
704537	2008-09-12 00:30:00	"Could not start process Unable to create io-slave: Read-only file system." While attempting to move something on a network drive.. i'll post quickly as within a few minutes the machine will be crippled Other errors have been amarok failing to talk to last.fm, and an inability to start a new torrent as i couldn't write to ~/,kde/something......... here we go again................	personthingy (1670)
704538	2008-09-12 00:55:00	First thing to do is run memtest - the main reason for filesystems dropping into read-only mode is the kernel / filesystem drivers noticing some kind of data corruption. The disk is then immediately remounted in read-only mode to prevent any (further) damage to what you already have. The fact that the problem is occuring across all your drives means it's probably not a disk issue. Does memtest pass or fail (let it run through a couple of times, just to be sure)? If it passes, run reiserfsck --check against all your filesystems - it may be that the reiserfs driver has been updated and is noticing something.	Erayd (23)
704539	2008-09-24 00:51:00	As it turned out memtest was fine. I'm not going to find out exactly what was behind the issue, as the custurd levels became such that i couldn't boot, so i thought time to try a new OS, and am currently running Mepis 7.0, and have been for the last few days without issue. It seems not to have been a hardware issue. I might go back to Lenny with a fresh install once it's less experermental :) Ta for ye help.	personthingy (1670)
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