fsck.ext3: Unable to resolve 'LABEL=/home'

Azzath · 03-30-2005, 03:59 AM

Hi guys, I have a little problem,

I have previously installed FC3 on my /dev/hda1 and i had /home on /dev/hda2 , and i added mandrake 10.1 and allocated the mount point for /home same as for the FC3, which is on /dev/hda2 and now when i try to boot into fedora, it's giving me the following error message
fsck.ext3: Unable to resolve 'LABEL=/home'

how do i correct this problem?
Any comment on this would be helpful.
Thank you.
Regards,

acid_kewpie · 03-30-2005, 11:01 AM

i'd guess that when you installed mandrake it removed the ext2 label from the partition (which would make me wonder if it was formatted too....??)

to resolve the naming issue, either use "e2label /dev/hda2 /home", assumign that mandrake hasn't put it's OWN label there, or a more definite solution is to edit /etc/fstab and replace LABEL=/home with /dev/hda2.

i would still be worrying about all your /home data having been lost though!

vharishankar · 03-30-2005, 11:06 AM

Never allocate the same home partition between two distros. Dangerous. Might accidentally get formatted when installing the second one.

acid_kewpie · 03-30-2005, 03:27 PM

well not if you follow instructions properly. i'd normally install with no /home partition and add it in afterwards to ensure it's untouched. if you're using compatible applications, there's no reason not to share home really... so long as you use the same uid's.

Azzath · 03-30-2005, 03:52 PM

Hi acid_kewpie,
Thank you for your reply,....
I did format it by mistake when i installed the 2nd distribution (i.e Mandrake),
but it didnt have that much of data...so this time its a good lesson.

Quote:

replace LABEL=/home with /dev/hda2.

How i can edit the fstab file in FC3?
I cannot open the fstab in any editor..how can i edit in the command line?
I know commands like "cat" and "more" but i can only see the details in it. But if i want to edit what command do i use?

Question.
What file system should i choose in allocating a common /home partition, so that i can keep away from problems like these?
Or is it wise to have seperate /home for individual distributions?

Thanx for your time and effort.
Regards,

Azzath · 03-30-2005, 04:55 PM

Hi Chris,

you are right mate, i didn't follow some of your instructions properly..

I manage to edit the FC3 /etc/fstab and i changed as you told me.

Quote:

replace LABEL=/home with /dev/hda2.

Now i have another problem man,
it says

Quote:

Your session only lasted less than 10 seconds.If you have not logged out yourself, this could mean that there is some installation problem or that you may be out of disk space. Try logging in with one of the failsafe sessions to see if you can fix this problem.

i haven't got a clue what this is

But thank you soo much for helping all this way.
Could you please tell me, how do you add the /home after installing a distribution?
Is that by editing /etc/fstab?

Thank you soo much.

Regards,

acid_kewpie · 03-31-2005, 03:29 AM

hmmm, ok...that's not a great error, but from where' we're coming from i'd say that the reason we're getting that error is that the two users, who presumably have the same name, do not have the same user ids. most systems user id's (uid's) start at 500, but some minght start from 100, some from 1000, and in each instance it doesn't really matter. But you can appreciate how these will need to be consistent across a number of distro's using the same physical locations. in this instance you will simply not have permision to access your own home directory.

so here you have mandrake working perfectly right? so let's fix FC3 to play ball. log in as root on FC3 and run "ls -ln /home" that will show you the UID's of the directories in there. now you'll see something like:

Code:

kermit root # ls -ln /home/
total 99276
drwxr-xr-x  20 1001 100      4096 Jan 19 21:32 bob
drwxr-xr-x  75  500 100     24576 Mar 29 22:38 chris

the 500 there is my user id, the 100 is the "users" group, but that's only a convention on my distro, Gentoo. Now run

Code:

id -a your_normal_username

and you'll see what UID and GID FC3 thinks that normal user SHOULD be.... you should just need to make the UID's the same via

Code:

usermod -o mandrake_uid -g mandrake_gid

next time you log in as your normal user, you *should* get in just fine and forever more.

i get the impression you're not that used to using terminals and such, but the commands i've given you above are really all you need, and it's so much quicker to test if you can log in as your new user on a terminal (e.g. hit Ctrl+Alt+F2 for a 2nd login prompt etc...)

Azzath · 03-31-2005, 05:37 AM

Hi chris,
these wer the results
for

Code:

ls -ln /home/

it gave me

Code:

drwxr-xr-x 14 501 501 4096 Mar 31 2005 azzath

and for

Code:

id -a azzath

Code:

uid=500(azzath) gid=500(azzath) groups=500(azzath)

I've tried

Code:

usermod -o 501 -g 501

but its saying user 501 does not exist
What might be the cause for it to to say "does not exist"?
Appriciate for any help man,
Thank you,
Regards,

acid_kewpie · 03-31-2005, 02:35 PM

my bad.....

sorry the syntax should be

Code:

usermod -u uid -g gid username

pants. you might find it easier to edit /etc/passwd directly, as this is actually all that the usermod command will do. you'll also need to ensure that the group id is also changed via groupmod from 500 to 501.

Azzath · 03-31-2005, 02:58 PM

Oh God!!
Now when i am trying to log into FC as a root, its giving me an error saying that the system is going down ............... and prompting for a login:

Whats might be the cause for this??

Please help..

acid_kewpie · 03-31-2005, 03:20 PM

hmm... i really wouldn't have thought that that usermod command would have done so, but all i can guess is that roots's uid or gid was changed by mistake. you should be able to boot to single user mode or mount the FC3 / partition under mandrake to edit /etc/passwd and revert the root entry to root:0:0:otherstuff if that command gave an error though, then it should have had no effect at all....

Azzath · 03-31-2005, 04:15 PM

I have edited uid and gid by mounting and changing the file in /etc/passwd
and i used

Code:

groupmod -g 501 azzath

to change the group id (i hope i used the command correctly)

the /etc/passwd file looks like this

Code:

root:x:0:0:root:/root:/bin/bash
bin:x:1:1:bin:/bin:/sbin/nologin
daemon:x:2:2:daemon:/sbin:/sbin/nologin
adm:x:3:4:adm:/var/adm:/sbin/nologin
lp:x:4:7:lp:/var/spool/lpd:/sbin/nologin
sync:x:5:0:sync:/sbin:/bin/sync
shutdown:x:6:0:shutdown:/sbin:/sbin/shutdown
halt:x:7:0:halt:/sbin:/sbin/halt
mail:x:8:12:mail:/var/spool/mail:/sbin/nologin
news:x:9:13:news:/etc/news:
uucp:x:10:14:uucp:/var/spool/uucp:/sbin/nologin
operator:x:11:0:operator:/root:/sbin/nologin
games:x:12:100:games:/usr/games:/sbin/nologin
gopher:x:13:30:gopher:/var/gopher:/sbin/nologin
ftp:x:14:50:FTP User:/var/ftp:/sbin/nologin
nobody:x:99:99:Nobody:/:/sbin/nologin
dbus:x:81:81:System message bus:/:/sbin/nologin
vcsa:x:69:69:virtual console memory owner:/dev:/sbin/nologin
nscd:x:28:28:NSCD Daemon:/:/sbin/nologin
rpm:x:37:37::/var/lib/rpm:/sbin/nologin
haldaemon:x:68:68:HAL daemon:/:/sbin/nologin
netdump:x:34:34:Network Crash Dump user:/var/crash:/bin/bash
sshd:x:74:74:Privilege-separated SSH:/var/empty/sshd:/sbin/nologin
rpc:x:32:32:Portmapper RPC user:/:/sbin/nologin
rpcuser:x:29:29:RPC Service User:/var/lib/nfs:/sbin/nologin
nfsnobody:x:65534:65534:Anonymous NFS User:/var/lib/nfs:/sbin/nologin
mailnull:x:47:47::/var/spool/mqueue:/sbin/nologin
smmsp:x:51:51::/var/spool/mqueue:/sbin/nologin
pcap:x:77:77::/var/arpwatch:/sbin/nologin
xfs:x:43:43:X Font Server:/etc/X11/fs:/sbin/nologin
ntp:x:38:38::/etc/ntp:/sbin/nologin
gdm:x:42:42::/var/gdm:/sbin/nologin
azzath:x:501:501:azzath:/home/azzath:/bin/bash

i didnt do the reverting root antry part as it is already stated root:0:0..
Now the problem is that when i start booting into the system i can log in giving my normal user id, but the desktop environment (gnome) doesnt load properly, and giving me loads of errors.
some of the errors are

Quote:

Error activating XKB configuration
An error occured while loading or saving configuration information for rhn-applet
An error occured while loading or saving configuration information for gnome-panel
An error occured while loading or saving configuration information for Nautilus
GConf error
An error occured while loading or saving configuration information for Print Notifier
An error occured while loading or saving configuration information for gnome-settings-deamon
An error occured while loading or saving configuration information for gnome-session

What must be it this time?
Thanx for helping me.
Regards,

acid_kewpie · 04-01-2005, 09:11 AM

ok well you're able to log in, so you should be pretty much done, if you run "ls -la /home/azzath" you should see the full list of details for all files. these should now all report that they are owned by your user, by name, not by id. maybe some files got created with the wrong user id, but i can't quite see that happening. have you tried loading a different wimdow manager? fluxbox for instance. just for testing of course...

Azzath · 04-01-2005, 03:46 PM

Thanx chris,
This is my

Code:

ls -la /home/azzath

result

Quote:

[azzath@localhost ~]$ ls -la /home/azzath
total 208
drwxr-xr-x 20 azzath azzath 4096 Apr 1 22:27 .
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 Jan 5 2004 ..
-rw------- 1 azzath azzath 396 Mar 31 23:15 .bash_history
-rw-r--r-- 1 azzath azzath 24 Mar 30 05:30 .bash_logout
-rw-r--r-- 1 azzath azzath 191 Mar 30 05:30 .bash_profile
-rw-r--r-- 1 azzath azzath 231 Mar 30 05:30 .bashrc
drwxr-xr-x 3 azzath azzath 4096 Mar 31 22:44 .config
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 12 Mar 30 11:30 .desktop
drwx------ 3 azzath azzath 4096 Mar 30 11:36 Desktop
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 25 Mar 30 11:30 .dmrc
drwxr-x--- 2 azzath azzath 4096 Mar 31 22:44 .eggcups
drwxr-xr-x 3 azzath azzath 4096 Mar 31 01:08 .emacs.d
-rw-r--r-- 1 azzath azzath 24 Mar 31 01:10 .emacs-places
-rw-r--r-- 1 azzath azzath 24 Mar 31 01:09 .emacs-places~
-rw-rw-r-- 1 azzath azzath 27599 Apr 1 22:27 .fonts.cache-1
drwx------ 2 azzath azzath 4096 Apr 1 22:25 .gconf
drwx------ 2 azzath azzath 4096 Mar 31 23:41 .gconfd
drwx------ 4 azzath azzath 4096 Mar 31 22:44 .gnome
drwx------ 6 azzath azzath 4096 Mar 31 22:44 .gnome2
drwx------ 2 azzath azzath 4096 Mar 30 11:36 .gnome2_private
-rw-r--r-- 1 azzath azzath 135 Mar 31 22:44 .gtkrc-1.2-gnome2
-rw------- 1 azzath azzath 945 Apr 1 22:25 .ICEauthority
drwx------ 6 azzath azzath 4096 Mar 30 11:36 .kde
drwxr-xr-x 3 azzath azzath 4096 Mar 30 11:36 .mcop
-rw------- 1 azzath azzath 31 Mar 30 11:36 .mcoprc
drwxr-xr-x 2 azzath azzath 4096 Mar 30 11:36 .MdkOnline
drwx------ 3 azzath azzath 4096 Mar 31 22:44 .metacity
drwxrwxr-x 3 azzath azzath 4096 Mar 31 23:03 .mozilla
drwxr-xr-x 3 azzath azzath 4096 Mar 31 22:44 .nautilus
drwxrwxr-x 2 azzath azzath 4096 Mar 31 23:26 .qt
drwx------ 2 azzath azzath 4096 Mar 31 22:44 .rhn-applet
-rw------- 1 azzath azzath 497 Mar 31 22:44 .rhn-applet.conf
-rw-r--r-- 1 azzath azzath 3729 Mar 30 05:30 .screenrc
drwx------ 3 azzath azzath 4096 Mar 30 11:36 tmp
-rw------- 1 azzath azzath 66 Apr 1 22:25 .Xauthority
-rw------- 1 azzath azzath 2491 Mar 31 23:41 .xsession-errors

Why is that when i log in as root, it doesnt give me any errors? Could you see any unwanted files created above?
Could you plz tell me how could i load up fluxbox window manager?
I dont like to giveup, Thanx for all your help all this while.
Cheers.
Kind Regards,

acid_kewpie · 04-03-2005, 04:45 AM

ok well there are two dotfiles there owned by root, not you. change those to your normal user (as root of course) and try then... never sure who owns that .desktop file... kde or gnome... not sure.