[GTALUG] Wheezy no longer accepts my passwords to open /home and /mnt partitions on boot

[Ken Heard]

In my Wheezy box I have two encrypted hard drive partitions, /dev/mapper/md07_crypt for /home and /dev/mapper/md05_crypt for /mnt. (Mnt is no longer used. That partition was originally for /tmp; in a weak moment I persuaded myself that I needed to encrypt /tmp. I have since changed the mount point for /tmp to tmpfs and consequently changed the mount point of /dev/mapper/md05_crypt to /mnt pending its deletion. In the meantime it still has to be opened.)

This morning, when I tried to boot this box, I found that the passwords for those two partitions were not accepted. Finally, after entering the correct passwords numerous times, the following messages were received.

[info] Loading kernel module loop. [info] Loading kernel module coretemp. [info] Loading kernel module it87. [ok] Activating lvm and md swap ... Done [....] Checking file systems ... Fsck from util-linux 2.20.1 BOOT was not cleanly unmounted, check forced. BOOT: 245/120960 files (20.4% non-contiguous) 58505/241664 blocks Fsck.ext4 No such file or directory while trying to open /dev/mapper/md07_crypt. Possibly non-existent device? VAR: recovering journal Fsck died with exit status 9 Failed (code 9). [FAIL] File system check failed. A log is being saved in /var/log/fsck/checkfs if that location is writable. {My note: that location was not writable; so no such log was created.} Please repair the system manually ... Failed! [warn] A maintenance shell will now be started. CONTROL-D will terminate the shell and resume system boot ... (warning) Give root password form maintenance (or type CONTROL-D to continue):

After entering the root password the root bang appeared.

At this point I did not know what to do by way of reparing the system manually. I consequently closed the box, first by running "shutdown now". After various messages flashed by on the monitor I was asked once more to give the password for maintenance or type CONTROL-D again. After typing CONTROL-D again my user login appeared, but of course I could not log in. At that point I was finally able to close the computer with the Alt-S command.

I hope that somebody or bodies can tell me what to do to make this computer usable again -- short of having to do a completely new installation.

Regards, Ken Heard

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