I certainly know how to make problems that i cant fix. This is the third linux forum i've turned to, as i got no replies on the last one, and the one before was rather inactive. So i hope people here can help me.
I cant start fedora core 5 at all at the moment, it runs through the boot process, enters runlevel 3 and then sits on bringing up eth1, a spare network card which i want to get rid of. So i even tried taking it out, trying to start it again, still sits there, trying to start it, whether the card is even in there, or if there is a network cable in or not. I disabled eth1 before, and would remove it if i could even get in there to take it out completely.
I plugged a cable into which would it start it in init 5, but right now im in init 3, which doesnt just say Failed to start eth1 like 5 does, it just sits there doing nothing, and inittab is set to default 3, as when you type init 3 in root console, it pretty much becomes useless. It stops some things, and sits there doing nothing. So i had to use inittab to get to runlevel 3, to install some drivers.
But now im locked out of fedora essentially, as it wont start.

I know i have to do one of two things:

• Disable network on boot/disable eth1
• Edit inittab back to 5 in hope that it will start like it did before, and then trash eth1.

I've tried getting into the hard drive using DSL to modify inittab. mounting the hard drive doesnt work, it never has when ive tried in the past, it says you must specify the filesystem (ext2). So i popped open a terminal and tried to mount it. and it says special device hda2 doesnt exist.
I have no idea.
Im sure that just from having Fedora ive cut a year worth of my life just from stress. But oh well.

hitting ctrl-c should cancle the init process of any eth card
of course you should not be viewing fedoras bootup splash screen.

you can also check if grub has a 'failsafe' mode for fedora which you could boot with

if /dev/hda2 does not exitst - are you using ide or sata - and which ide-channel / sata channel is it connected to?


i.e.
IDE:
primary master = /dev/hda
primary slave = /dev/hdb
secondary master = /dev/hdc
secondary slave = /dev/hdd

SATA:
primary = /dev/sda
secondary /dev/sdb

You can use a kernel parameter to boot into a specific run level. This parameter must be last, and consists of the run level number only. Just edit the kernel line in grub and add a 5 to boot into run level 5.

Adding the 5 worked. But now it doesnt want to start eth1 either.
Ctrl C did nothing.

i'll hunt for failsafe to see if i can somehow stop networking. edit: Cant find it, anyone help in turning off networking?

Im using IDE.
Single drive on master of primary channel. Two partitions, boot and the main one. Boot can be accessed, but the other cant.

Could you post the output of (as root):

Obviously in knoppix, as i cant get into fedora. FS is Ext2, Fedora default install.

That explains why you can't mount /dev/hda2 - it's an LVM partition.

What are the contents of your /etc/fstab file?

There's got to be some kernel boot parameter to accomplish this, but I can't tell you what that would be off hand. I'm guessing it's either hanging on the probe for your NIC, or loading some inappropriate driver and then hanging when that driver goes to initialize your card or something. You might check out the Linux Ethernet HowTo:

http://yolinux.com/HOWTO/Ethernet-HOWTO.html

I think there's something like a "noprobe" boot parameter, but that's probably a bit drastic. That would disable all hardware probing and you'd have to identify your hardware and specify which modules to load manually. Yeuch. I'm not sure if the "noapic" boot parameter would be helpful in your case. I guess it can't get much worse than it is now, so might as well try it if you're desperate.

No idea. Whatever the default Fedora install is, i suppose. I formatted not too long ago.

Tried noapic, did nothing. Noprobe is excessive. I wouldnt know what to do.
edit: Well, after rebooting after noapic, its started. Im in init3 and can get root access.
Now, could anyone give me a command to completely remove eth1?

You should be able to remove /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth1 -- you can probably also use system-config-hardware or some such GUI util to do it.

Oh great, it was working until i removed that file.
It used to say it had a different mac address than expected. Now its sitting there trying to start it again.


But once again, rebooting it after i tried noapic, it fails to start eth1, and ive got terminal access again. Typed init 5 and it started up. Ive removed the network card out of system-config-network and the device too.

Thanks for your help, i still wish i could read it in knoppix though.

The following will work in Knoppix 5 (which includes support for LVM2)
If you do not have Knoppix 5, and are using older version 4, you will need to install LVM2 manually first (before doing the above). Here's how: