fsck

[awcreamsoda]

On another machine I have had some problems with fsck because I forced it to check a mounted volume. I can't seem to find out how yo unmount a volume. What I used to use for OS X dodesn't seem to work and the man pages aren't much help. I was thinking that I should backup my sda volume. Is there any intuative backup software, with a GUI, that I could download and use for back up.

[Boo]

first you have to unmount the partition/filesystem you want to fsck.
you can not do this if the partition/fs you want to fsck is the / partition/fs or is being used at the time.

so the best option is to boot off the mint live CD and use fsck from there to check your filesystem on each partition.

fsck /dev/sda

[scorp123]

I can't seem to find out how yo unmount a volume.

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man umount

... And you have to be "root" to unmount a partition (e.g. use "sudo" ==> "sudo umount /dev/your/disk" ...), and it shouldn't be in use when you try to do so. Best thing would be to go into "single user mode" and try from there. Or as it was already suggested: Boot from a live CD and not touch the harddisk at all.

BTW: Forcing a fsck on a mounted partition most likely will destroy some if not all the data

What I used to use for OS X dodesn't seem to work

Does that really surprise you? Different OS, different things to do and not to do ... What you say is like "I know how to drive a 5000$ car but I can't fly 25M$ super-sonic jet plane: why not?"

and the man pages aren't much help.

You have to read them

Is there any intuative backup software, with a GUI, that I could download and use for back up.

And how do you mean to perform a restore if disaster strikes? Every backup procedure is only as reliable as the restore procedure. Sure, there are GUI backup tools and you can install and use them ... But what if your system all of a sudden won't boot anymore? How do you then plan to get into that GUI tool ... ? And if you can't get into that GUI tool, how do you plan to get your data back?

You'd be better of to learn the super-duper powerful shell tools such as tar and gzip .... They work, GUI or not, and the tools are installed per default everywhere and will happily operate even from the most minimal live CD you can get.

I myself backup my stuff on external USB harddisks ... if disaster strikes again (and it already did several times) I can get my stuff back anywhere, anytime and I don't have to rely on GUI tools I probably won't be able to get into in the first place when the worst case happens

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sudo su -
cd /path/to/USB/disk
tar --one-filesystem -pzcvf BootFS_backup.tar.gz /boot
tar --one-filesystem --exclude=/tmp/* --exclude=/dev/* --exclude=/proc/* -pzcvf RootFS_backup.tar.gz /
tar --one-filesystem --exclude=/var/tmp/* -pzcvf VarFS_backup.tar.gz /var
tar --one-filesystem -pzcvf UsrFS_backup.tar.gz /usr
tar --one-filesystem -pzcvf HomeFS_backup.tar.gz /home