RH9 suddenly won't boot?? Root filesystem damaged?? execvp not found??

From: Greg Courville (NGPS0000_at_gee-enginuity.com)
Date: 10/28/03 

Date: 28 Oct 2003 03:38:58 -0800

This message is rather urgent, as I can't stand being stuck in Windows
and I left a lot of important information on my linux partition...

First off, I do run a telnet server. Yes I know how insecure that is.
However, I am pretty confident my password is quite resistant to
brute-forcing (a friend of mine tried for an hour and couldn't get
in!). Anyway, yesterday I came to my computer and as soon as I tried
to use it I noticed that the mouse was being extremely sluggish. I
closed every running program, but no improvement! Since I have ports
open for Telnet, SSH, VNC, and FTP, I though it was possible that I
was under a DOS or brute-force attack.
I logged out and back in, and this seemed to clear it up for about a
minute, then it started again. I finally resorted to rebooting...
halfway through the Linux boot sequence, the column of OK's is
interrupted by a FAILED. Here's the full message as best as I can
reproduce it (I can't exactly copy and paste it!):

checking root filesystem
execvp - no such file or directory
[ FAILED ]

Then it tells me the filesystem is damaged and drops me to a root
shell and the prompt says "Repair filesystem 1" and with every
command, the number increases ("Repair filesystem 2", "Repair
filesystem 3", etc). Something like that.

I had been running my system for days without rebooting, so I don't
know exactly at what point this "damage" occurred... Is it possible
that some joker managed to telnet in and screw my system? I think
telnet is the only possibility, since my FTP server only gives write
access to my /home folder. It is also possible that this was caused by
something I installed, but besides VMware I have not done any major
installations lately.

I know many of you have better uses for your time than trying to help
some guy fix his computer, but there are people emailing me and I need
to refer to information that's stuck in Kmail on a system that won't
boot! I need help, fast!

What do you people think happened here, and how should I got about
fixing it?

Thanks 

--
Greg Courville
www.gee-enginuity.com

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