Why is my boot partition listed as Unmounted in Disk Utility?

Question

I recently experienced a kernel panic ("your mac must restart...") due to an issue with Macfusion, so after the reboot I loaded Disk Utility in an attempt to verify the disk in case something was left in a bad state. Disk Utility claims that my main partition is unmounted, though it's clearly not.

Is there something amiss here or am I just suffering from post-crash paranoia? The system appears to be running properly.

Note: I'm running OS X Lion and am using File Vault. If (because of FV) this is expected behavior, how do I run a Verify/Repair?

Answer 1

The best option is to reboot with the option key held down. Boot from your Recovery HD and first repair the volume containing the partition you indicated, then repair the partition itself.

It is unusual, but not unheard of for the verify function to not be available since the design is to be able to self-verify but nor self-repair the boot volume.