On Monday 14 November 2011 11:41 pm, Yasha Karant wrote:
> My wife did not notice that her laptop was unplugged, and ran the
> machine until it quit for lack of power.  Running SL 6.1 IA-32, current
> production SL kernel (not elrepo, etc.).  On the reboot with improperly
> unmounted partitions, the auto fsck failed, and gave the usual enter
> root password or ctrl-D prompt to run fsck manually.  When this
> happened, rather than accept the full root password, after the first few
> characters, the enter prompt re-appeared, and would never let me get to
> a shell.  I finally had to put the install DVD that has the rescue
> option into the DVD drive and boot from the DVD, and used fsck -y under
> rescue to fsck the partitions from ls /dev/sd*.  The system then
> rebooted.  What is wrong?  What do I need to change?
>
> Yasha Karant

Reported this problem back in SL5.5 - it is still not fixed.   The only 
solution I found was to do an install and once disks were mounted - no 
formatting.   Then you do something crude - bail out at this point as new 
fsck has been written to match patricians.   
It works - desperate measures by desperate men.
If only you were able to do what the message implies, have root passwd, edit 
required files, save files and reboot.   
There is a mathematical limit to security and that is when it becomes 
a "STONE".    It then only responds to a large hammer.

One other issue is that during the install it knows all the disk info but 
there is no way to use it.   You have to plod threw the edit menu and 
manually fix stuff.   

Some one at RH need to put their foot down and say no more visual updates till 
core issues get fixed.   How do you like KDE and goofy icon stuff.   That is 
one reason we did not deploy SL 6.  we will stick with SL 5.7 for now.

As a commercial user - I have a very different view of things.   If the 
factory is not running - nothing is shipped - no checks are received - no 
payroll money !  No wonder the Boss has but a little gray hair and is a 
grump.   

This is reality - like it or not.

As a whole SL 5.7 is a great product, most love it, because it works - I only 
wish it could be better. 
These odd operational issues can be fixed and should be.

Larry Linder