Rebuild journal on a ext3 file system

If you encounter the following problem;

• The system boots normally but after some time, the some partitions are remounted as Read-Only.
• You see some errors in the output of dmesg related to reading from the journal.
• A manual file system check doesn't solve the problem

you probably need to rebuild the journal of that ext3 file system. This can be done with the following steps:

Login as root directly on the (a remote connection won't do it since we'll enter single user mode).

Enter single user mode

# init 1

Remount the partition as read-only

 # remount -n -o remount,ro /dev/sda1

(replace /dev/sda1 by the name of the device which file system you want to fix)

Check the partition for errors

# fsck -y /dev/sda1

Remove the journal

# tune2fs -O ^has_journal /dev/sda1

Remount the partition as read-write

# mount -n -o remount,rw /dev/sda1

Recreate the journal

# tune2fs -j /dev/sda1

Remount the partition as read-only

 # remount -n -o remount,ro /dev/sda1

 Check the file system (and have the journal inode block info backed up

# fsck -f /dev/sda1

Reboot the system

# reboot

This should solve the problem !