System startup failed. Commandline was presented. Required manual file system check of the root filesystem. This was not possible to do.

I have a computer with CPU 3GHz, 512 MB Ram, ATI Radeon PRO 128 MB, HP harddrive. The partitions on the harddrive are /dev/hda1 (FTA32 compact-recovery partition. The size of it is 3.64 GB), /dev/hda2 (NTFS partition running Windows XP. The size of it is 94.4 GB), /dev/hda3 (EXT3 partition running Ubuntu. The size of it is 49.9 GB) and /dev/hda4 (SWAP partition. The size of it is 1 GB). These were also my exact partitions when the bug occurred. I shall now describe what kind of bug it was and how it occurred.

I was running Ubuntu Edgy Eft 6.10. I can not remember exactly what programs where running, but it was nothing out of the ordinary. I can recall Mozilla Firefox and Gaim of them. I decided I want to install digiKam. I started the GUI-version of the package manager of Ubuntu. I have forgotten its name. I am referring to the one that does exactly what apt does but provides a GUI. I selected digiKam and confirmed my choice to start the installation.

The installation finnished. The package manager stated this and brought it to my attention by the soft silver-orange blinking at the bar at the bottom. I switched to it in order to confirm that the installation was finnished by clicking OK. Once I clicked OK (or shortly after that I clicked OK) the basr at the top and at the bottom of the screen froze. I am referring to the bar at the bottom with all active programs, small thumbnails of running desktops, etc.. I am also referring to the bar at the top with the clock, the menus, the volume-button, etc.. I could not click on their features; they did not respond. The only exception was the Gaim icon at the top right. Clicking on it showed me my running instance of Gaim as it was supposed to. But nothing else (the menus, the desktop-buttons, etc..) responded.

Ubuntu was however running. I could still use Firefox, Gaim, etc.. I was even able to start digiKam through a commandline.

After a while, I decided that maybe a reboot of the computer would restore the bars at the top and the bottom. I could not use the menu to restart the computer. I pushed the powerbutton on my computer once. The Quit-windows appeared. I chose Restart. The system did not respond. I pushed the power-button again. The Quit-windows appeared again. I once more chose Restart. The system did not respond this time either.

I pushed the power-button and kept it pushed for five seconds. The power of the computer went of. I started up the computer. The bot-screen that allows me to choose which partition I want to start up from showed up. I chose my Ubuntu-partition. After a while, the startup-screen showed up. I am referring to the screen that shows the Ubuntu-mark, has the name of Ubuntu on it and shows a progress bar that reflects how much of the startup-process has been accomplished. The progress bar went on filling itself until it reached roughly speaking 20-25%. It then stopped progressing.

The startup-screen was completely replaced with text. I have written down parts of this text. I shall now present it here.

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* Checking root file system...
/etc/rcS.d/S20checkroot.sh: 407 logsave: not found

* An automatic file system check (fsck) of the root file system failed. A manual fsck must be performed in maintenance mode with the root filesystem mounted in read-only mode.

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I did not write down the rest of the text. I shall now try to recall it to the best of my abilities.

+ I was told that it was required of me to run a "fsck" manually from a maintenance mode. I was told that I would now enter som sort of maintenance mode.
+ I was told to press Ctrl+D when I was done.
+ The system (referring to the "thing" that was presenting this error and running the computer at the time) was trying to enter some kind of maintenance mode. However, this utterly failed. It tried to execute fuor commands. They both returned a response stating that the command was unavailable, except the first one. The first one stated something like that batch jobs were not available or could not be started.
+ A commandline, awaiting my input, was presented.

I typed fsck and hit enter. The system stated that there was no such command. I also tried typing fsck.ext2 and fsck.ext3. The system stated that there was no such command. I tried these in combination with sudo. The system still gave the same response. Finally, I tried typing "sudo fsck.ext3 /dev/hda3". The system gave the very same response.

I rebooted the computer by pressing Ctrl+D. The system said something like "entering maintenance mode failed". I started the computer from the liveCD that I used to install ubuntu. From the instance of Ubuntu that was running from the CD, i mounted /dev/hda3 and entered it. I entered /sbin. I noted that both fsck, fsck.ext3 and fsck.ext2 were there. Please note that these are the programs that I could not find during my first reboot. I had not placed these files there. I had not been able to run any kind of program that would be able to place these files there.

From the liveCD, I wrote "sudo fsck /dev/hda3" and pressed enter. I was told that "the last 'write-time' was in the future" It asked me if I wanted to fix this. I chose to allow it to do so. The it stated that /dev/hda3 is "clean".

I made a reboot, this time without the liveCD. I chose to enter my Ubuntu-partition. After the same process, I was presented with the same error that i have now described in detail. Still, fsck, fsck.ext2 and fsck.ext3 where nowhere to be found.