After the power failure, my system cannot boot up...Please help..

the following is the error message:

WARNING: bad format on line 1 of /etc/fstab
WARNING: Your /etc/fstab does not contain the fsck passno field. I will kludge around things for you, but you should fix your /etc/fstab file as soon as you can.

fsck ext2: Is a directory while trying to open / [Failed]

***An error occured during the file system check
***Dropping you to a shell; the system will reboot
***when you leave the shell
***Warning SElinux is active
***Disabling security enforcement for system recovering
***Run 'setenforce1' to reenable
Give root password for maintenance
(or Control-D to continue):

Please help!! I don't have a back up of my /etc/fstab.... How do I recover my system without losting my data . .. . really need your help

2 ways. Easy or hard?

Easy - grab a live cd, and edit your fstab.... The process is load the cd in the cdrom, boot up, mount your root drive and navigate to /etc folder. This makes it easy to see what is wrong and to navigate around your file systems if need be.

Hard - Give your root password at the prompt and try to edit the files that way. I find this hard as the editors I usually use are not loaded at this point.

I never use a liveCD before... I've a fedora rescue disc.. is it the same thing?

Let say I'm able to edit my fstab file, what should I put in that file to mount it and access it?

I've never experience in a linux crash before... a step by step would help.... thank you

Fedorea rescue disk would work, but I can not advise you further on how to use it, as I have never used a rescue disk from a distro.

I can however tell you about live-cd's and they are fantastic. The principle is this. You have an entire OS on cd. It only uses your ram, and cdrom. Once the OS is loaded, you then can gain access to anything on that computer. Yes - This is why computer security involves "who" can access your physical computer - but that is another subject.

Here is a list of most of the live cd's around

http://distrowatch.hostcentral.net.a...hp?resource=cd

Once downloaded and burnt, pop the cd in the cdrom and reboot. Once loaded log in as root and go to the file manager that you use. i will assume a KDE base for simplicity.

1) Open konqueror
2) Click on /mnt
3) find where your main root partition is eg /mnt/hda1

This part is important because it dictates what we need to use in the mount command.

4) open a console and enter

mount -t ext3 /dev/hda1 /mnt/hda1

This means mount - with file type "ext3" - the device "/dev/hda1" - on the file structure "/mnt/hda1"
If your file system is reiserfs the change ext3 to reiserfs

5) Go back to your browser and you should be able to see you hard drive files under /mnt/hda1
6) Edit /ect/fstab by right clicking on the fstab file. Choose "open with" then "Kate"




Once adjusted, click save and reboot. Please realise this is only a guide. Do not put in my actual values. Also, there are so many ways of doing this, but I am trying to give you the easiest way using a mouse with a file manager. Hope this helps