Okay, I'm fairly green at Fedora, but it has worked like a gem until now. On startup I get a screen that says this:
Booting 'Fedora (3.6.11-4.fc16.x86_64)'
Loading Fedora (3.611-4.fc16.x86_64)
Loading initial ramdisk ....
_Fedora-16-x86_6: Unexpected inconsistency; run fsck manually.
(I.e., without -a or -p options)
Dracut warning:e2fsck returned with a 4
Dracut warning: _Fedora -16-x86_6 contains a file system with errors, check forced.
Dracut warning: _Fedora -16-x86_6: Inodes that were part of a corrupted orphan linked list found.
Dracut warning:*** an error occurred during the file system check.
Dracut warning: dropping you to a shell; the system will try
Dracut warning:*** to mount the filesystem(s), when you leave the shell
Dracut warning:
Dropping to debug shell.
Sh: cannot set terminal process group (-1): Inappropriate ioctl for device
Sh: no job control in this shell
(Repair filesystem):/#
Thanks, guys, any help is greatly appreciated
Seems like your "initial ramdisk" - the basic OS which is used to boot the system further - is corrupted. I suggest booting from a Live-CD, Install-CD or something such and replacing it.
You might find some explanation why this has happened and how it is corrected here and here, a general explanation of how to debug Dracut problems can be found in the Fedora Wiki.
All these links came up on top of a Google search for "Dracut warning", directly copied from the error message you posted. The best help i could give you therefore is: don't be shy, paste errors simply into Google and usually something helpful comes up.
I hope this helps.
bakunin
Thanks, Bakunin, I tried the Fedora wiki, but couldn't even get past the commands for 'identifying your problem area'. They all come back 'command not found. I don't have a startup cd.
Then create one: download an ISO-image of a startup- (installation-, repair-, Live-, ...) -CD and either burn it to a medium or use "unetbootins" to create a bootable USB stick. Then start from this.
I hope this helps.
bakunin
I found my install disk, but can't figure out how or when in the startup process I can get it to load. The fedora tutorials show an automatic screen that I'm not getting.
Your systems BIOS has probably some boot priority set: prospective devices with bootable media (hard disk, CD-ROM, Floppy, USB stick, ...) are scanned and tried for bootable media. It is also possible to exclude devices from this process: once you have installed your system you probably do not want an accidentally left CD-ROM to be tried for a bootable system and hence stop the boot process, therefore it is commonly disabled as a booting device. Now is the time to revert this setting (and maybe switch it back on once you solved the problem).
There is probably also a key "boot options" which you can press during BIOS boot which allows you to temporarily pick a booting device.
I hope this helps.
bakunin
When the machine very first powers up, you should see at least one message on the screen that has words like "F12 bios" or "F9 boot sequence". It may be F5 or another function key. These messages last only a few seconds. You want to get into your bios to
change the boot sequence.
Try each key you see in the messages.
Lean on the key for a second or two. This will cause the boot sequence to stop and go into bios setup. Or boot sequence setup.
If you don't like what you see, cycle the power.
Somewhere in one of the screens you'll will find something about what devices you want to use to boot from and the order to look for the devices. You want to boot from CD.