How to run fsck on guest VMs from KVM

Solution 1:

install libguestfs:

# yum install libguestfs-tools

use guestfish to open the disk image:

# guestfish -a /path/to/diskimage.img

Welcome to guestfish, the libguestfs filesystem interactive shell for
editing virtual machine filesystems.

Type: 'help' for help on commands
      'man' to read the manual
      'quit' to quit the shell   
<fs> run
<fs> list-filesystems
/dev/vda1: ext4
/dev/system/lv_root: ext4
/dev/system/lv_swap: swap

and fsck the problematic filesystem:

<fs> fsck /dev/system/lv_root
fsck should have 2 parameter(s)
type 'help fsck' for help on fsck
<fs> fsck  ext4 /dev/system/lv_root
...

good luck!

Solution 2:

You might be able to mount the file on the loopback interface and fsck it. From the site www.ingent.net/en/tag/kvm/ , use:

losetup -f
/dev/loop0

...to see that loop0 here is the next free device, then assign the disk image to that point.

losetup /dev/loop0 disk.raw

kpartx is used to create devices to access it.

kpartx -av /dev/loop0

Then you should be able to use fsck.

fsck.ext3 -f /dev/mapper/loop0p1
fsck.ext3 -f /dev/mapper/loop0p2

...and so on. The page is about converting systems to run on KVM, but this part cited above may put you on track to do an fsck repair; I'd add the caution that you should do this with a copy of your image file instead of the base image file, just in case something goes wrong.

Solution 3:

Besides what Bart Silverstrim suggested, I can see two ways:

1. use libguestfs to mount and manipulate the images
2. boot the VM with a liveCD ISO attached, and either reset the fsck flag or run it using the liveCD