Informational

Symptoms

When an ESX host reboots, you see the error:
UNEXPECTED INCONSISTENCY; RUN fsck MANUALLY.

(i.e., without -a or -p options)
*** An error occurred during the file system check.
*** Dropping you to a shell; the system will reboot
*** when you leave the shell.

Give root password for maintenance
(or type CTRL-D to continue)

Cause
This issue is caused by a corrupted ESX file system.

Resolution
Use one of these two options to resolve this issue:

Use fsck
Use fdisk and e2fsck–p

Both of these options require that you use single user mode on the ESX host. To enter single user mode:

Reboot the ESX host.

When the GRUB screen appears, press the space bar to stop the server from automatically booting into VMware ESX.
Use the arrow keys to select Service Console only (troubleshooting mode).

Press the a key to modify the kernel arguments (boot options).
On the line presented, type a space followed by the word single, and press Enter. The server boots into single-user mode.

Using fsck to resolve this issue:
Enter single user mode on the ESX host.

Run the fsck command with these parameters:

# fsck -f -c -y

Using fdisk and e2fsck–p to resolve this issue:
Enter single user mode on the ESX host.

Verify the partition tables using this command:

# fdisk –lu

Make note of the partition information.

Unmount the partition:

# umount /dev/partition_name

Run the e2fsck–p command on the affected partition. For example:

# e2fsck–p /dev/sda1

Once the file system check is complete, reboot the host:

# init 6