# harddrive being mounted read only

## prolific

i have a SATA harddrive (500GB) ..

everytime i restart my computer i get this message saying vfs mounted root read-only ... filesystem seems to be mounted read-only. skipping journal replay.

this is what my fstab looks like ...

```
# <fs>                  <mountpoint>    <type>          <opts>          <dump/pass>

# NOTE: If your BOOT partition is ReiserFS, add the notail option to opts.

/dev/sda1               /boot           ext3            noauto,noatime  1 2

/dev/sda3               /               reiserfs                noatime         0 1

/dev/sda2               none            swap            sw              0 0

/dev/cdrom              /mnt/cdrom      audo            noauto,ro       0 0

#/dev/fd0               /mnt/floppy     auto            noauto          0 0

# glibc 2.2 and above expects tmpfs to be mounted at /dev/shm for

# POSIX shared memory (shm_open, shm_unlink).

# (tmpfs is a dynamically expandable/shrinkable ramdisk, and will

#  use almost no memory if not populated with files)

shm                     /dev/shm        tmpfs           nodev,nosuid,noexec     0 0
```

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## Sleipnir

I guess that after the bootup process finished you can write to your HD right?

Then this is normal behavior. The kernel first mounts the drive read-only to 

perform a file-system check. I don't know if this is default or specified at the

kernel commandline in your favorite bootloader. Have a look there! In lilo

normally a "read-only" line can be found...

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## Gabriel_Blake

Sorry of digging up an old topic but I have the same problem. 

My root partition is on reiserfs and I get an error "file system seems to be mounted read-only. Skipping journal reply." After that it's mounted read-write and everything is fine. What's that error for ??

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## Gabriel_Blake

anyone ??

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## Mben

I could be wrong but I think ext3 and possibly some others require that the filesystem first be mounted read-only for disk checks. The startup scripts take care of this and remount everything read-write at which point reiserfs will do its disk check... no harm done.

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## Gabriel_Blake

well... so what's the solution to that error ?? I mean... reiserfs can't make any checks on startup because of this bug. Not to mention that is slows down the system start by 2 seconds (I'm trying to make my system boot as fast as possible)

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## Mben

reiserfs seems to do its checks automatically when it is eventually mounted read-write (it doesn't seem to require running fsck) on my system.

As for a solution, I don't have a good one. You could look into changing the start scripts to prevent this behavior (I'd start with /etc/init.d/checkroot). A quick look at the scripts indicates that they check for a file called "fastboot" on your root filesystem which will prevent boot script initiated disk checks completely. (you could put "touch /fastboot" in your local.stop file). 

Perhaps someone else knows more?

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## Mr. Tao

I have exactly the same problem.

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