In the recent query "How to login as root on Fedora 14 from console"
John VV replied:

AAMOI & FMI what are those good reasons?

I ask because, apart from su -, I've been using the "commentingoutline2 in /etc/pam.d/password" hack to get at "root" for months and have just had an FC14 winDoze"BSOD"equivalent - ie after the usual 10 or 15 second's worth of hdd "concretemixer" noises it would get to the "F" logo and "hang" - no mouse pointer would appear and it would get no further.

The cause, I think, was that I'd been shuttling back and forth from my user account to root trying to alter/freeup the @#$% permissions when suddenly neither password (root or user) was accepted - and when rebooting it just "hung".

I "solved" this by downloading (from cyberciti.biz) the "full" installDVD to get at the "rescue" bizzo - the "stripped" down 1xCD (ex a magazine's coverDVD (Feb APC ex Oz)) that I'd installed offof didn't seem to have the "rescue" gubbins in it.

The rescue seemed to have to rewrite SElinux labels or something like that and then it all seemed to work OK again - am using it now.

Except that after the "autoupgrade" it just did to the ...100 kernel it seems to come up with:
"No root device found
Boot has failed, sleeping forever."
And I have to go back to the 2.6.....97 kernel again to get it to boot up.

Is it the "pam hack" causing this or is it perhaps my possibly "fraying" sdd? - an excellent (AShampoo) winDoze app that I use seems to show slightly/slowly declining sdd health.

A good/timely reminder to back up everything important! - onto my USB external hdd.
Even considered, for a day or so, "going to the cloud" - ie using my ISP's server for in and out emails - only need a browser for that

TIA
Paul W

Sometimes all it takes is re-creating the initramfs. for more info, and, if that's not enough,just reply here

Thanks muchly for that RockDoctor

Am not quite "computerliterate" enough to get it to work properly, even after reading the man and the Fedora pages on it.

Does one just use the kernel number (which (the nonbooting one) = 2.6.35.14-100) or the whole /vmlinuz/... bizzo from the grub "kernel..." line - which, I spose, is both the <image> and the <kernel>?

ie do I run (from root obviously):
?

And how come it's obviously doing it OK (ie setting up the initramfs) in the ...-97 kernel bootup process?
Is it (possibly) worth clearing the -100 kernel and then re-installing it??

TIA
Paul W

My idiocy - for some reason the last two lines of the -100 kernel entry in grub.conf had gotten "commented out".

Fixed now and working OK.

Mea culpa

Glad it's working. The only reason I didn't give an example is that I always have to read the man page when I want or need to recreate the initramfs file. After reading your penultimate post, I decided to see if any of my bash histories include an actual example, and, lo and behold, one does (but I had to chroot into an older installation to find it).
`uname -r` provides the version of the currently running kernel; apparently I was aiming for an initramfs file that just included the components needed to boot my system. For some reason, size mattered.

Another command to put into my cranial harddrive - or my sda (to be pedantic) I spose
Still looks quite tricky to use though!
There's always some new thing to learn in linux - and so many good people/uplines on LQ

Thanx again for your help in my idiocy