HI!

My config:
Slackware 9.1 & kernel 2.6.4 on reiserfs
All worked OK. All my hardware detected and worked.

One day I booted and I saw error:
"can not open /etc/mtab for writing"
The boot procedure continued and I was able to login as root (the only user on system).
The directories /proc /sys are EMPTY!
lsmod, modprobe mount ... are not working all complaining about mtab.
I even can not see the file (ls returned "permissin denied")!
So I found /etc/mtab permissions are ALL NONE for everybody including root.
I bootted Slackware CD and tried to correct permisions on mounted FS.
I got "permissin denied".

Can anybody help me to change permissions of /etc/mtab to correct state?

Regards!


Zdenko Dolar

"Can anybody help me to change permissions of /etc/mtab to correct state?"

The permissions for /etc/mtab should be 644.

The most direct way to do this is to login as root and use this command:
chmod 644 /etc/mtab

From a rescue CD the commands to use are something like:

mkdir /gerbil
mount -t ext3 /dev/hda3 /gerbil
chmod 644 /gerbil/etc/mtab

If necessary change ext3 and /dev/hda3 to what your system has.

___________________________________
Be prepared. Create a LifeBoat CD.
http://users.rcn.com/srstites/LifeBo...home.page.html

Steve Stites

As I mentioned, chmod DO NOT WORK!
When I Issue "chmod 644 /gerbil/etc/mtab" I got:
"permission denied"
I can not chown or chmod! - "permission denied"
That is the problem! The system (mounted reiserfs FS) DO NOT ALLOW me to chmod or even see what the current permissions are.

Can you help me with that?

Linux user since 1996, so I am not the beginner.

Regards!


Zdenko

"When I Issue "chmod 644 /gerbil/etc/mtab" I got:
"permission denied"
I can not chown or chmod! - "permission denied""

I used one of my spare partitions to experiment with your problem. I issued the following commands:

/sbin/mkfs -t reiserfs /dev/hdg4
mount -t reiserfs /dev/hdg4 /spare3
mkdir /spare3/etc
touch /spare3/etc/mtb
ls -l /spare3/etc/mtb (permissions = 644)
chmod 000 /spare3/etc/mtb
ls -l /spare3/etc/mtb (permissions = 000)
chmod 644 /spare3/etc/mtb
ls -l /spare3/etc/mtb (permissions = 644)

I then went through the same commands again except that I formated and mounted /dev/hdg4 as ext2. I got exactly the same results as I got on reiserfs.

So I conclude that the permissions = 000 is not the problem which prevents you from changing the permissions. Perhaps the reiserfs inodes are bad. I suggest that you run fsck -t reiserfs against the partition and see what it tells you.

___________________________________
Be prepared. Create a LifeBoat CD.
http://users.rcn.com/srstites/LifeBo...home.page.html

Steve Stites

Thank you jailbait !

You were right!


In between I booted Knoppix, that have fsck.reiserfs, that Slackware install CD do not.
The FS check returned a few errors, among them "record 'number' (/etc/mtab) points to nowhere".
The cleaning of FS corrected the problem.

The source of all that was transition to kernel 2.6, when my nforce2 based mobo freezed a few times until two weeks back on nforcershq forum I got advice to disable APIC at boot time!

Thank you and regards!


Zdenko