Playing World of Warcraft is locking my entire system into read-only

Ask Fedora
1

Heya, fellow gamers! I have battle.net installed via Lutris, and when playing World of Warcraft, upon exiting the game (either doing it myself or by it crashing), my system will go into read only mode.

I don’t know how to better describe it, but in this state, everything down to and including Dolphin and Konsole say “Configuration file (insert relevant program here) not writable. Please contact your system administrator.”

I’m at a bit of a loss, and not even sure where to begin to attempt to troubleshoot this issue.

2

Can you use ctrl-alt-f1 etc to get to a console?
Can you ssh into the system from another?

Once you have a terminal you can run commands in you can start collecting information. Start with sudo dmesg where I would expect to see errors.

3 
[11384.998150]  item 164 key (207266996224 168 20480) itemoff 7248 itemsize 53
[11384.998151]          extent refs 1 gen 257980 flags 1
[11384.998152]          ref#0: extent data backref root 256 objectid 10754562 offset 1480720384 count 1
[11384.998153]  item 165 key (207267016704 168 12288) itemoff 7195 itemsize 53
[11384.998154]          extent refs 1 gen 205426 flags 1
[11384.998155]          ref#0: extent data backref root 256 objectid 8673422 offset 131072 count 1
[11384.998156]  item 166 key (207267028992 168 4096) itemoff 7142 itemsize 53
[11384.998158]          extent refs 1 gen 205426 flags 1
[11384.998158]          ref#0: extent data backref root 256 objectid 8675796 offset 262144 count 1
[11384.998160]  item 167 key (207267033088 168 69632) itemoff 7089 itemsize 53
[11384.998161]          extent refs 1 gen 303703 flags 1
[11384.998161]          ref#0: extent data backref root 256 objectid 12851778 offset 20840448 count 1
[11384.998163]  item 168 key (207267106816 168 24576) itemoff 7036 itemsize 53
[11384.998164]          extent refs 1 gen 285762 flags 1
[11384.998164]          ref#0: extent data backref root 257 objectid 3153932 offset 1179648 count 1
[11384.998166] BTRFS critical (device nvme0n1p3 state EA): unable to find ref byte nr 207263309824 parent 0 root 256 owner 19258 offset 1478656 slot 86
[11384.998169] BTRFS error (device nvme0n1p3 state EA): failed to run delayed ref for logical 207263309824 num_bytes 8192 type 178 action 2 ref_mod 1: -2
[11384.998172] BTRFS: error (device nvme0n1p3 state EA) in btrfs_run_delayed_refs:2207: errno=-2 No such entry
[11385.804379] systemd-journald[725]: /var/log/journal/fb5e18f7b575418e95df780640593611/system.journal: Journal file corrupted, rotating.
[11385.804391] systemd-journald[725]: Failed to rotate /var/log/journal/fb5e18f7b575418e95df780640593611/system.journal: Read-only file system
[11385.804397] systemd-journald[725]: Failed to rotate /var/log/journal/fb5e18f7b575418e95df780640593611/user-1000.journal: Read-only file system
[11385.806791] systemd-journald[725]: Failed to write entry to /var/log/journal/fb5e18f7b575418e95df780640593611/system.journal (23 items, 787 bytes) despite vacuuming, ignoring: Bad message

[11384.998150] item 164 key (207266996224 168 20480) itemoff 7248 itemsize 53
[11384.998151] extent refs 1 gen 257980 flags 1
[11384.998152] ref#0: extent data backref root 256 objectid 10754562 offset 1480720384 count 1
[11384.998153] item 165 key (207267016704 168 12288) itemoff 7195 itemsize 53
[11384.998154] extent refs 1 gen 205426 flags 1
[11384.998155] ref#0: extent data backref root 256 objectid 8673422 offset 131072 count 1
[11384.998156] item 166 key (207267028992 168 4096) itemoff 7142 itemsize 53
[11384.998158] extent refs 1 gen 205426 flags 1
[11384.998158] ref#0: extent data backref root 256 objectid 8675796 offset 262144 count 1

Got the dmesg list, can’t make a text file. I’ve already ran smartctl on a live USB and confirmed zero errors on the drive itself.

4

When pasting text from the screen please use the preformatted text tags (the </> button on the toolbar) so it keeps everything line by line as displayed on the screen. I will edit your post above to add those tags and you may see the difference (will duplicate the entry to show with and without the tags.

5

Rgr that, my apologies.

6

As an update, I did some further searching on what could cause this, and ran into a heavily corrupted journal. Copied the contents onto a text file, ran

sudo journalctl --vacuum-time=1s

and will test the results as soon as the servers come up.

After further testing, this is not the solution. Digging through the logs, it says errno=-117 Filesystem corrupted

8

This is starting to happen to me after I upgraded to Fedora 41 KDE Spin/Edition. Typing reboot in the terminal to force it to reboot solves it but it can happen again sometimes days later…