[PATCH] e2fsck hangs up boot process because "Device or resource busy while checking ext3 journal for foobar"

[Montblanc]

I installed Kubuntu 13.04 x64 on a new SSD, but pointed its ext4 journal to another partition on a spinning disk (same block size, of course).

At every boot, e2fsck prompts me to check / for errors but it dies because:

fsck.ext4: Device or resource busy while checking ext3 journal for foobar

 foobar: ********** WARNING: Filesystem still has errors **********

[Please, also note: If I press I to ignore and continue the boot process, it complains about /tmp not being ready yet (I used bind in fstab because it's on another partition). So I press S to skip the mount and access lightdm which can't login yet because /tmp is unmounted (it would just restart itself). Accessing the tty with CTRL+ALT+F1 works and I can "sudo mountall" to correctly mount /tmp, then login and use the system as usual.]

Using a LiveCD to fsck the / partition shows that the filesystem is clean.

I built e2fsck from source and applied this patch http://www.spinics.net/lists/linux-ext4/msg38096.html before compiling and it solved the problem.

Now the boot-up process is smooth and it also carried away the /tmp not ready issue.

Please, apply this patch to e2fsprogs.

If you need more info, please just tell me.

[Ubuntu Foundations Team Bug Bot (crichton)]

The attachment "journal.c patch" seems to be a patch. If it isn't, please remove the "patch" flag from the attachment, remove the "patch" tag, and if you are a member of the ~ubuntu-reviewers, unsubscribe the team.

[This is an automated message performed by a Launchpad user owned by ~brian-murray, for any issues please contact him.]

[Ben Romer (bromer)]

I have the same problem but the opposite disk arrangement (my root is on the spinning disk with ext4 journal data on SSD). I was able to work around the boot issue by turning off the automatic fsck in my /etc/fstab file, but obviously that is not an acceptable long-term solution.

[Ben Romer (bromer)]

It looks like this problem is fixed in 13.10. :)

[Theodore Ts'o (tytso)]

Fixed in 2013.

[Theodore Ts'o (tytso)]

Was released a ***long*** time ago. Guess Canonical doesn't do this automatically.