Help Center/ Elastic Cloud Server/ Troubleshooting/ Disk Space Management Issues/ What Should I Do If the "Read-only file system" Error Message Is Displayed When I Attempt to Delete a File on a Linux ECS?
Updated on 2024-08-15 GMT+08:00

What Should I Do If the "Read-only file system" Error Message Is Displayed When I Attempt to Delete a File on a Linux ECS?

Symptom

When you attempt to delete or modify a file on a Linux ECS, the message Read-only file system is displayed.

Possible Cause

The possible causes are as follows:

  • A file system error caused the file system to be read-only.
  • The file system is mounted as read-only.
  • The hardware is faulty, for example, the disk contains bad sectors or the RAID controller card is faulty.

Precautions

  • Repairing file systems may cause data loss. Back up data in advance.
  • If the issue you encountered does not fall into either of the following scenarios, check whether the hardware is faulty.

Scenario 1: File System Mounted as Read-only

  1. Run the following command to check how the directory containing the to-be-deleted file is mounted:

    mount |grep Mount point

    If ro is displayed in the output, the directory is mounted as read-only. Then go to step 2.

    If rw is displayed in the output, the directory is mounted as read/write. Then perform procedures described in scenario 2 to check whether the file system contains errors.

  2. Run the following command to remount the file system as read/write. There is no need to restart the system.

    mount -o remount,rw Mount point

    To mount the file system as read/write upon the next startup, modify the parameters in the fourth column in the /etc/fstab file.

Scenario 2: File System Error Occurred

  1. Run the following command to check the file system information in the kernel:

    dmesg |egrep "ext[2..4]|xfs"

    The "I/O error ... inode" output indicates that there is a file system error.

    Back up data before repairing the file system. Since file systems cannot be repaired when they are in use, switch to the single-user mode to unmount all file systems and then repair the file systems.

  2. Restart the system and switch to the single-user mode.
  3. Query all available devices and file systems.

    blkid

  4. Check the file systems on device vdb1.
    • For the ext file system, run the following command:

      fsck -n /dev/vdb1

    • For the xfs file system, run the following command:

      xfs_check /dev/vdb1

    If the output indicates that the file systems are mounted, unmount these file systems.

    1. Run the following command to query the file systems mounted on the device:

      mount

    2. Run the following command to unmount these file systems:

      umount Mount point

  5. Repair the file systems on device vdb1.
    • For the ext file system, run the following command:

      fsck /dev/vdb1

    • For the xfs file system, run the following command:

      xfs_repair /dev/vdb1