fsck_msdosfs failing

[Ben Williams]

illoai at gmail.com wrote:
> On 18/01/2008, Ben Williams <ben at iugo.com.au> wrote:
>> Hi all,
>>
>> I've got a problem with fsck_msdosfs. My FAT32 drive came up with errors
>> after a power-failure-induced reboot, and recommended that I run
>> fsck_msdosfs manually. However, fsck_msdosfs fails:
>>
>> # fsck_msdosfs /dev/ad3s1
>> ** /dev/ad3s1
>> ** Phase 1 - Read and Compare FATs
>> No space for FAT (Cannot allocate memory)#
>>
>> I've tried googling for it and I can't find anything other than a bug
>> being mentioned/filed for netbsd which is obviously related, but no fix
>> was forthcoming.
>>
>> Does anyone have any ideas how I can proceed?
> 
> Are you still in single user mode at this point?

Well, I was.

I have made a tiny bit of progress - I edited /etc/fstab and turned the 
fsck at boot time off for that drive, so I can boot normally now, just 
without that drive mounted. However, I still get the same error message 
from fsck_msdosfs.

I am able to run top at the same time, as as far as I can tell, it 
doesn't actually run out of memory - Mem has ~564k free, and Swap has 
158mb free at its lowest when fsck_msdosfs is running. It's an old 
machine, with 192mb ram, and 359mb swap.

  - Ben