Entire system in read-only mode --can't login and I suspect virus...

[Gaming4JC]

Hello,
First of all I have been running Ubuntu just fine for about 3 days no problems on this new installation of Hardy. However, just the day before yesterday and yesterday I got this error message on boot up:

"* the root file system is currently mounted in read-only mode"
"A maintenance shell will now be started"
Then is continues to fail all the way up to the fsck which I ran.

I was able to recover it, but then just yesterday it came back. I tried reseting all the file permissions via "chmod 777 /home/" and a few other commands I found on the forums.

Please see the full messages below:








Now the system comes to the logo and makes a freezing halt.

I'd prefer not to have to reinstall to fix this, as I have dial-up the updates took forever.

On thinking back on the only to programs I installed before this happened was aMule and KVIrc. Do you suppose something was modded? I got it right from the package manager, but I've heard KAD network can be exploited. I have been running firestarter and AVG no problems before this and it said my system was clean..

Please if anyone knows anything post, I really would like to get my computer working again as now I lost everything until I can log back in. (I can read the drive via the livecd as I said though I'd prefer not to reinstall everything) HELP.

[cdenley]

That looks like a hardware problem, probably the hard drive. Maybe a bad sector. Try booting a livecd, then without mounting the disk, run

sudo cat /dev/sda>/dev/null

If you get any errors, it's almost definitely a hardware problem.

If you want fsck to fix problems without asking you to press "y", use the -y option.

fsck -y /dev/sda

fsck obviously can't fix hardware problems, though.

[p_quarles]

Well, since there are no known circulating viruses for Linux, and since this isn't the typical behavior of any virus for any system, and since this is the typical behavior for a dying hard drive, I'd say it's a dying hard drive.

[/etc/init.d/]

It's amazingly clear from those messages that your hard drive is dying. You don't have a virus.

[Gaming4JC]

Hello Again,
I would have said a hard drive crash too except for the fact I've had 3 of them and this Seagate 320GB I just purchased not more than 7 months ago so it's still under warranty.

I talked with ASULutzy on the #ubuntu irc channel, he thought it was a hard drive failure as well. When I ran his version of fsck command it produced many errors. The interesting thing is that I have done a dozen hardware diagnostics tools and they say my hard drive is fine. At the moment I am running SeaTools full surface scan, so far no errors.

He also mentioned my hard drive temp had reached 190 degrees and that that was rather hot. My box has one fan on the side blowing in and one pushing out from the power supply in the back. As well as the typical CPU fan.

I also purchased two 1GB memory sticks DDR and a new power supply after I received some memory errors on my WinXP about 6 months ago.

To top all of this I had a nasty virus on my WinXP that may have caused some damages to hardware. Check it out here:
http://forums.comodo.com/virusmalwar...-t23002.0.html
(When you have the time be sure to read over the whole thing, it was quite an experience.)
I noticed my CMOS is saying the overheat shutdown temperature is set to "Disabled" I think it should at least be the maximum preset, on top of this when I was running Windows my computer would occasionally restart itself. That was about a year ago, but I wonder if it is possible the virus could have of infected MBR and flashed my CMOS. I did a zero disk wipe before installing Ubuntu so hopefully it's out of MBR, but you never know...

I pressed Ctrl+Alt+F2 at the frozen boot screen on Ubuntu and it says "Kernel Panic init!" and won't let me get to a console...

As soon as SeaTools is finished I'll post the results and run that fsck command again but this time with your settings. Thanks for your help and let me know if you have any more comments/suggestions on this.

I sure was enjoying Ubuntu before the whole thing came crashing down.

[ASULutzy]

heh, I don't know that I said 190 degrees. I don't remember the exact value that your smartmontools returned for temp, but it was hotter than I'd feel comfortable with.

Even if you manage to get this working again, you absolutely should buy a new hard drive because the current on you're using won't be lasting for all that much longer.

Also, you keep mentioning this virus, but there's really no feasible way that it could possibly do all these things. Like I said, no virus/piece of software/whatever, can actually tell your drive to error.

You need a new hard drive (:

[Gaming4JC]

I turned off the memory scan after 16hrs, it had reported no errors, and it should be fine says I just bought them not long ago.

SeaTools full surface scan of sectors passed. It says the hard drive is fine...


sudo cat is running now. I never mounted the drive, but do I need a command to unmount it in live cd? I'm unsure if it's mounted by default or not.

[p_quarles]

I turned off the memory scan after 16hrs, it had reported no errors, and it should be fine says I just bought them not long ago..

Are you talking about memtest? That has nothing to do with your hard drive -- it only "tests" "memory" (as the name implies )

[Gaming4JC]

Yes. I ran memtest last night just to make sure memory was fine too.

I ran SeaTools though too (the hard drive diagnostic utility from the official vendor.)

Edit: That sudo cat command seems to be doing nothing. It's just sitting there after I typed it with a |. Shouldn't it say it is running or is it normal?

[Gaming4JC]

Ummm... what now?

ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo fsck -y /dev/sda1
fsck 1.40.8 (13-Mar-2008)
e2fsck 1.40.8 (13-Mar-2008)
/dev/sda1: clean, 164090/19161088 files, 1913755/76622009 blocks
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo e2fsck /dev/sda1
e2fsck 1.40.8 (13-Mar-2008)
/dev/sda1: clean, 164090/19161088 files, 1913755/76622009 blocks
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$  sudo fsck -y /dev/sda1
fsck 1.40.8 (13-Mar-2008)
e2fsck 1.40.8 (13-Mar-2008)
/dev/sda1: clean, 164090/19161088 files, 1913755/76622009 blocks
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo fsck -y /dev/sda
fsck 1.40.8 (13-Mar-2008)
e2fsck 1.40.8 (13-Mar-2008)
fsck.ext2: Device or resource busy while trying to open /dev/sda
Filesystem mounted or opened exclusively by another program?
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ umount /dev/sda
umount: /dev/sda is not mounted (according to mtab)

LOL, now it says it's fine. unless I'm reading something wrong here.