gentoo boot failure (hard drive not mounted properly)

Hi!

I've been pretty frantic about a problem i've been having. I have a gentoo file server at home and I had given it a reboot. I had typed : 'init 0' and while the server was shutting down, it gave me some module dependency errors so I hit the power button and gave it a hard boot. Now when I reboot it back up, it tells me that my hdb1 was not properly unmounted, it tries to fix it...and then crashes shortly after that.

Is there anyway I can retrive the data on that hard drive? All help would be greatly appreciated.

What's the error when it crashes?

Boot from CD to console (I assume Gentoo's disc has a "rescue" console) and do fsck /dev/hdb1.

What filesystem is /boot ?

If you have the filesystem specified incorrectly in fstab and you try to fsck it, it may try to use the wrong tool and die. If you boot from the gentoo CD or a knoppix cd, run fsck.[filesystemtype] on the partition in question.

Also, you should not be mounting /boot unless you need to update the kernel or makes changes to grub.conf . It's better to leave /boot unmounted, in which case you'll never have to worry about a hard shutdown causing damage to it.

If you are using reiserfs for boot, make sure the notail option is added under mount options in fstab.

I'm not sure what filesystem it is

do you mean hda1, hda2, etc.?

Anyways, I ran fsck /dev/hda1 and it returns:
fsck 1.35 (28-Feb-2004)
e2fsck 1.35 (28-Feb-2004)
/dev/hda1: clean, 38/10040 files, 8052/40128 blocks

Then I ran fsck /dev/hda2 and it returns:
fsck 1.35 (28-Feb-2004)
fsck: fsck.swap: not found
fsck: Error 2 while executing fsck.swap for /dev/hda2

Then I ran fsck /dev/hda3 and it returns:
fsck 1.35 (28-Feb-2004)
e2fsck 1.35 (28-Feb-2004)
Couldn't find ext2 superblock, trying backup blocks...
ext3 recovery flag clear but journal has data
Recovery flag not set in backup superblock, so running journal anyway
/dev/hda3: recovering journal
Pass 1: Checking inodes, blocks, and sizes


After this, it seems to freeze and nothing more seems to happen.....

any thoughts?

actually, it keeps going....

and then it asks me

Free inodes count wrong for group #*some number (*some number, counted = *some number)

and it keeps asking me to fix
so I have just been pushing y

Okay, I was able to fsck all my hard drives...

however, when I boot up my server now, it tells me that I have to be in root to run everything

so I look around to make sure all my files are still on there

login as root
and then type reboot

When my server boots up again, it says hdb1 was not cleanly unmounted again! And it does a check forced

then freezes again....

hmmm

I tried starting the ssh daemon and it gave me an ERROR: must be root to run init scripts

BUT, I AMM in root

so I try typing su to try and get into root again and it gives me a segmentation fault....

any ideas?

grr
there's just too many problems

I'm just gonna transfer all my files

Then reinstall gentoo

Any tips/tricks for what I can do when setting up my home server?