Emplode won't initialise properly, it get's stuck at 'Checking Media'

Are you sure it's stuck? Checking media takes a looong time on big discs. (And for some reason, on big full discs it's ages before the first "blip" of progress starts.)

If you've left Emplode for half an hour and it's still stuck, try manually fsck'ing the discs (as per the FAQ), then run Emplode. Emplode will rebuild the database and all will be fine.

Peter

Edit: Sheesh, impatience!