In reply to:
"fsck -fay /" fails, because /etc/fstab still contains 'ext2' as the filesystem. However when you use "fsck -fay /dev/hda5" it won't look at the fstab, but use whatever filesystem it can derive from the superblock, i.e. ext3.
Sounds good in theory, but the fs he is trying to fsck is the root partition which (assuming he followed the directions on my page) is still ext2. If you look at the usage info for the version of fsck I provide it does not support the 'fsck /mountpoint' syntax.
empeg:/empeg/bin# fsck
Usage: fsck [-panyrcdfvstFSV] [-b superblock] [-B blocksize]
[-I inode_buffer_blocks] [-P process_inode_size]
[-l|-L bad_blocks_file] [-C fd] [-j ext-journal]
[-E extended-options] device
I am not sure why this is different that the stock empeg fsck, but I will add a note to my info page noting the difference.
-Mike