Hi all,

I rather stupidly messed around my fstab file to automount some file systems. Now when I boot, (even in Rescue mode) I am told that certain filesystems can't mount and I am dropped to a "shell".

I understand this is the linux equivalent of a "msdos prompt" but I dont know any of the commands needed to edit the fstab file. Part of the problem is "...no blank line at the end of the file."

If I could get a text editor running I could probably (though not definitely) have a go at fixing it myself. I'm having to post this from my work computer (Windows!!) so if you need any other info I'll have to check when I get home tonight.

Sorry to be a pain with what is probably a stupid newbie question. (Running Fedora Core 1 by the way)

Thanks in advance, Millyfish

cd /etc
ls -a # there should be a copy of your old fstab called fstab~
mv fstab~ fstab

Thanks Andrew,

Just to recap (in case I'm as thick as I sometimes think!)

cd /etc ... changes to /etc directory

ls -a # ... lists all files in the directory ?

Supposing fstab~ exists...

mv fstab~ fstab ... overwrites fstab with the copy (fstab~) which existed as a backup when I messed up the original fstab.

Am I understanding correctly??


MillyFish

i think you do understand.

vi, nano, and pico are text editors you may have access to to edit the file. vi is pretty tough to use. run cat on the file to look at it before overwriting and see if it looks like your old one, if you don't want to try to edit.
run mount
with no options to see where your partition is mounted. then you'll have to cd there to get at the etc/ like cd /mount/sysimage/etc or something like that.

Yes, you have !!!

[edit] I deleted wrong info.

Thanks all.

Yes, when I boot in rescue mode, the system is mounted on /mount/sysimage so I'll need to cd to it there. "mv" refers to "move" then.

I'll have a "stab" at this when I get home - pun intended!

Cheers

Millyfish

Incase you don't have an old working version of fstab you can also cd to the directory where fstab is and do a cat fstab.

Paste the output here, and we could perhaps help you correct the errors.

Hello All

Problem sorted now - couldn't find ftab~ anywhere and when I did I couldn't move, copy or delete anything (wrong permissions) However, I got hold of a knoppix cd and (after a few boots, eventually in failsafe mode) I was able to unmount the original filesystem with fstab on it, then remount in read/write and correct the error.

Just in case you are interested, the original fstab which caused the problem had three spurious characters right at the front (%$¬). Dont know how they got there, but they're gone now and everything boots fine!

Thanks for everyone's help.

Millyfish

As soon as you can I recommend trying to find your way around the console as you'll probably end up there at some point again. That's one of the best things that I got used to when I switched from mandrake to slackware.. not to say I'm in anyway super at it but I can find my way around without x fairly well.

Sound advice xanas3712

I'll have a bash at it later - (Damn it, there goes another of those puns!)

Cheers

Millyfish

heh.. at least you say that properly.. you don't know how many time I've heard "no pun intended" when pun was intended.. lol..

the command for remounting a partition rw is,
mount -o remount,rw (mountpoint or device. doesn't matter)
like
mount -o remount,rw /dev/hda5