Can't login with /var was not properly dismounted

[Alex Zbyslaw]

Kris Kennaway wrote:

>> doing fsck -y /var (using signle user mode) I get
>>
>>** /dev/ar0s4d
>>** Last Mounted on /var
>>** Phase 1 - Check Block and Sizes
>>
>>pressing ^T right after issueing the command I get
>>load : 0.42  cmd: fsck_ufs 70 [physrd] 0.00u 0.00s 0% 1336k
>>then it hangs. It doesn't respond to further pressing of  ^T.
>>    
>>
>
>I wonder if you have hardware failure..it seems to be hung trying to
>read from the disk.
>  
>
Is your disk SMART compliant, I wonder (many are)?  Does you BIOS show 
SMART status on boot?  (Mine does, but it insists on clearing the screen 
just after it shows it, requiring deft use of Pause-other key-Pause-... 
to see it properly).  If the BIOS is no help then try booting single 
user and taking /var out of fstab, then installing smartmontools (you'd 
need to have network stuff configured so probably need to go multi-user 
before doing this).

I also notice that this looks like a RAID disk (/dev/ar* is IDE raid is 
it not?).  I'm not that familiar with RAID setups (yet), but is this 
hardware RAID and does the controller not tell you anything?  If it's 
mirrored, can you try un-raiding and then seeing if any disk alone works?

--Alex