\etc\fstab problem

franklampard · 10-03-2005, 03:12 AM

Iam having redhat linux 9.0 running on my machine... and also GRUB boot loader... everything was working fine...

But suddenly iam having a strange message during boot loading...saying that

" the first two lines of fstab is not correct "
and it is asks me to enter root password to correct it or just press CTRL+D to reboot

If i gave my root password it only opens a shell prompt... and even if i tries to open fstab using vi editor i couldnt able to do that....

I dont know what to do other than reinstalling the OS

aysiu · 10-03-2005, 03:42 AM

Any reason you're using Red Hat 9.0 instead of Fedora Core 3 or 4? Just curious.
What's the error you get when you try to edit the /etc/fstab with vi?
Do you have a live CD that you can use to edit the /etc/fstab with?

b0nd · 10-03-2005, 03:42 AM

hello,
if its not letting you access /etc/fstab that way then why don't u try with the 1st cd of that distro........go to linux rescue mode..and then check out the entries of /etc/fstab

regards

Optimistic · 10-03-2005, 08:14 AM

Post your fstab file here so we can see what is wrong with the first two lines.

Hint: you can use lynx to access the internets and you don't even need X running.

imitheos · 10-03-2005, 04:26 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by franklampard
Iam having redhat linux 9.0 running on my machine... and also GRUB boot loader... everything was working fine...

But suddenly iam having a strange message during boot loading...saying that

" the first two lines of fstab is not correct "
and it is asks me to enter root password to correct it or just press CTRL+D to reboot

If i gave my root password it only opens a shell prompt... and even if i tries to open fstab using vi editor i couldnt able to do that....

I dont know what to do other than reinstalling the OS

try "cat /etc/fstab" and see what is the error.

Is "/usr" on a different partition than "/" ?
vi is usually "/usr/bin/vi" so if /usr is a different partition then it doesn't get mounted because the system has run "sulogin"

you can try to mount it manually
"mount /dev/sda3 /usr" (replace sda3 with yours)
and then run "vi /etc/fstab" to correct the error

jschiwal · 10-03-2005, 04:40 PM

If the root device failed to mount, your system at that point may be the initrd (ram disk) with the programs that exist in its bin and sbin directories. There may be a /bin/vim or /bin/vim-minimal. You probably want to look at the directories to make sure.

If you don't see your normal /etc/fstab file, you may need to manually mount the root device and chroot to it. I always execute "/bin/bash -l" at this point to run my normal root startup scripts. After that, the regular vim is available.