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A/UX -- how to fsck a large disk?

tattar8

Well-known member
I have A/UX installed on a 4GB disk, which I recently found out is not a good idea since the Startup fsck can't fsck it.  But I really don't want to start over with a fresh A/UX installation.  At the moment the disk was unmounted dirty, but now it won't boot because the disk needs to be fscked by the booter.  Is there any way I can convince A/UX to mount and boot from the disk even if it's marked dirty?

 
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beachycove

Well-known member
From the A/UX FAQ: "Take care that you don't use too large a disk, however. The fsck in A/UX Startup that checks the root filesystem cannot scan a partition larger than 2GB. A/UX's own fsck can check larger partitions just fine."

If it were me, I'd bite the bullet, try with an installation on a smaller drive, boot into it, and then see if repairs on the larger drive are possible. A simple, cut-down A/UX installation wouldn't take long. If all went well, I'd then be back where I wanted to be.

 

tattar8

Well-known member
Turns out it wasn't stuck, it was just slow, and gives no indication it's making any progress (very little HD activity).  I left it for a couple of hours and came back to find it sitting at a repair confirmation prompt.  The A/UX installer had actually partitioned the drive to a 2GB volume without me telling it to, so the volume wasn't actually 4GB after all.

 

uyjulian

Well-known member
Partitioning management will be slow, especially if you are on a slower machine managing large disks.

 

rplacd

Well-known member
In general, fscking large disks in older Unices with non-journaled filesystems is a PITA – every time you don't do a clean shutdown, lots of inodes get screwed up. I've ruined so many installations of OPENSTEP as well like that.

 
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cheesestraws

Well-known member
2G is really plenty for individual A/UX partitions anyway, at least in a “play” context. Certainly enough for /. I think I have mine set up with 2G /, 2G /usr, 2G /home and I think I put /opt on its own partition too. This is overdone, but I didn’t know what I was doing :)  

 
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