Re: [Nolug] CD-ROM problem

<jdtiede@bellsouth.net> writes:

> I got it to boot from an old 1G hard disc which doesn't have much on
> it besides RH 7.1. It gets to "localhost login" and after several
> tries will accept a login name and password. Anything beyond that
> tends to go into a cycle of flashing the last screen on briefly and
> then off for a couple of seconds. I called up vi, which I don't know
> how to use, and it eventually said "INIT: Id "x" respawning too fast:
> disabled for 5 minutes"

I'm not surprised. The linux on the old disk is configged for different
hardware (right?)

does you system not boot off of CDROM? You should be able to boot off
of the RH CD. You may need to set up your BIOS to boot from CD.
If it's not booting from known good bootable CD's then you do have a
hardware probably.

> I got it to take emacs the time before, but I don't know how to
> use that either. X-windows doesn't come up, and I apparently have to
> access to the regular hard disc. At this poitn I don't have any idea
> what to try next.
> ============================================================ From:
> <jdtiede@bellsouth.net> Date: 2003/02/25 Tue PM 05:46:34 EST To:
> nolug@joeykelly.net Subject: Re: Re: [Nolug] CD-ROM problem
>
> I find that it is booting from diskette up to the point of "Mounting
> local filesystems," which always fails, and that's what it hangs on
> "Enabling local filesystem quotas." Do I need to stick another hard
> disc in so I can get it working enough to make some changes? It tells
> me that /fstab has format errors in lines 5 and 10.

fstab is pretting important. It tells the system where your filesystems
are. Sounds like you made some inadvertant errors while editing it.

here's a base procedure you would follow to fix. Note that there are no
graphicaltools that are going to solve your issue...
1) boot off of a rescue CDROM. I'd use knoppix personnally but the RedHat
cd may be fine. I use what I know.
2) Once up and in a root user shell, mount the harddrive partition where
my root filesystem is (ie 'mount -o rw /dev/hda1 /mnt/hda1' assumes
/dev/hda1 is the partition. mkdir /mnt/hda1 if it doesn't exist already)
If you get an error about needing to fsck, do so first, then try the mount
again. (ie 'fsck /dev/hda1'. answer the many prompts)
3) edit /mnt/hda1/etc/fstab with your favorite (commandline) editor. pico
and nano may be on your rescue CD if you're not comfy with vi.
4) reboot and hope nothing else important is missing.

Details of what update procedure you were performing under Redhat may help
us give better detail.

You may be better off re-installing. Perhaps RedHat's installer will
preserve /home for you.

-- 
Scott Harney<scotth@scottharney.com>
"...and one script to rule them all."
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