# checkroot fails with loop-aes encrypted ext4 root. (Solved?)

## nlsa8z6zoz7lyih3ap

My root filesystem is encrypted with loop-aes and refered to in /etc/fstab as

/dev/loop6              /               ext4           defaults                0 1 

However /var/log/rc.log contains:

rc boot logging started at Mon May 18 13:58:24 2009

* Setting system clock using the hardware clock [UTC]...

 [ ok ]

* Loading module loop...

 [ ok ]

* Loading module pwc...

 [ ok ]

* Autoloaded 2 module(s)

* Checking local filesystems ...

fsck.ext2: Device or resource busy while trying to open /dev/loop6

Filesystem mounted or opened exclusively by another program?

* Operational error

 [ !! ]

* Remounting root filesystem read/write...

 [ ok ]

which seems to indicate that checkroot has failed in its task.

I am running 2.0.0.

Any suggestions?  Might this be a bug?  (My debian Lenny with loop-aes root does successfully check the root filesystem at boot.)Last edited by nlsa8z6zoz7lyih3ap on Sun May 24, 2009 3:05 pm; edited 1 time in total

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## frostschutz

what is mounting the filesystem if it's encrypted, and is it mounting it read only? Also is it done in a way that causes the root device to always be /dev/loop6, and is this device node present at boot time (not sure when /dev is populated by udev, before that you need static device nodes there)?

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## nlsa8z6zoz7lyih3ap

Thank you frostschutz for your reply.

I've been down a a few days as my root became so corrupted that I had to reinstall.

I believe (after some googling) that there was a bug in e2fsprogs that gave the error

 *Quote:*   

> fsck.ext2: Device or resource busy while trying to open /dev/loop6.

 

However I can no longer find the reference to this. By my memory, this was said to apply to ext2,ext3 and ext4

mounted on loop devices. ubuntu suffered this at some stage but debian lenny does not.

Perhaps this bug is also present on gentoo.

My solution has been to change my root filesystem back to reiserfs (3).

I have been using gentoo (with loop-aes  +reiserfs on /) since the early part of this decade and have never before had a filesystem corruption problem.

While I loved that performance and features of using ext4 on "/" my experience of using it

on / with loop-aes was very unhappy.

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