How can I fix Filesystem Corruption

File corruption can sometimes be difficult to track down, as it can stem from anything from unexpected shutdowns, configuration issues or other factors. Simply put, you filesystem becomes corrupted when files and their locations become inconsistent. But the good news is there is a very powerful utility called fsck that you can run from Rescue Mode that will help check for and potentially resolve filesystem issues.

Once you have your Linode in Rescue Mode you can refer to our guide on using fsck to find and repair disk errors. This should help you get started on sorting everything out.

As a general note on avoiding filesystem issues we strongly advise against issuing reboot and shutdown commands from the command line. This is because the Linode, being a virtualized server, cannot reboot itself gracefully. Rather it will just die and then be brought back up by the Lassie Watchdog. We recommend only issuing shutdown and reboot commands from the Linode Manager.

Hope this helps!