[Sheflug] fsck failure on SuSE system out in China - assistance appreciated

[Robert Holland <bobholland@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I had a report this morning that a 6 year old SuSE system located in
Shanghai is refusing to start up - failing on fsck with the file system
mounted read only. It is currently prompting for root password and
suggesting the file system is remounted read/write.

There are only novice users out there.

I could ship them out a new hard disk with everything pre-installed. I've
done this before, but it's a bit of a nightmare getting it there so
wondered if anyone had any bright ideas.

I was thinking of getting them to download and boot from a CD and then get
them to repair the disk from there. It's been a while since I've done
anything like this - nothing has broken on me for years so you get out of
practice. Suggestions for suitable CD based tools (IIRC there is no DVD on
the machine) which are easy to download would be appreciated.

They will follow instructions to the letter but I don't expect them to
interpret results and make their own decisions, so I'll need to give them
simple guidance.

This is one of two machines on a network. The other machine is apparently
working and should be accessible from here via ssh. I usually log into this
and tunnel through to do any minor tweaks but that's not possible right now.

Best wishes to all.

Bob
-- 
R E B Holland BEng CEng FIET (Bob)
+44 1909 568630 | bobholland@xxxxxxxxxxxx | http://www.throapham-house.co.uk|
http://www.bradwell.net
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/bob-robert-holland-ceng-fiet/3/a43/b77
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