disk suddenly full and write protected
 

hello after i installed gnome from slacky.eu i had a whole lot of problems:

run level wont work
fstab empty

i managed to more or less fix them. now for some reason my 60GB partition is full (just after installing gnome) and write protected.
i tried to remove the /tmp file but couldnt.
how can i write on the disk to remove the gnome files. what could i do?

Probably other ways, but I can think of this:

Boot off the Slackware installer disc, press ENTER until you get the # root prompt, mount the hard disc partition(s) read/write, then edit/delete what you want.

It depends to some extent on just what you did "to more or less fix them".

What is your output when you do this?

starting slackware will only go into single user mode:

PS
also the clock keeps on changing, even in the window$ partition.

when i type df -h

now the win partition is 15G and not 59G as it is stated.

i need to remove the write protection on the disc to copy the fstab file which is empty.
check out these threads also (the links are at the beginning of this thread):
thanks for the help.

What does the command ' /sbin/fdisk -l ' show?

Brian

Why are you even trying to fix this ???.
If you have no confidence that the partition definitions are correct, why would you want to write anything to them ???.
The fact that your inittab and fstab were empty should be setting off alarm bells that you are not seeing what you think you are looking at.
How can you know what you are over-writing by updating the disk ???.

Sounds like a recipe for more problems developing further down the road. My suggestion would be to restore your system, and redo the update that caused the problem and see if there is an inherent problem there.

/sbin/fdisk -l

[HTML]<pre>
Disk /dev/sda: 100GB, 100030242816 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 12161 cylinders
Units= cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 1 784 6297448+ 12 Compaq Diagnostics
/dev/sda2 * 785 3992 25768260 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda3 3993 4236 1959930 82 Linux Swap
/dev/sda4 4237 12161 63657562+ 83 Linux
</pre>[/HTML]

i guess that would be to learn and help others learn.
also it never crossed my mind that this problem is so difficult to solve.

how do i restore the system?
how do i restore my system without losing my archives?

This is confusing as to what is going on.
Do you know for sure the sda4 partition is ext3?
It could be something else like LVM or rieserfs. Also I'm not a Slackware user so I guess it handles ntfs read support?
But if sda4 is full then it may not even mount others because it mounts as directories under the sda4 root partition. Not 100 percent sure on that.

Have you tried booting with a live cd like knoppix and see what it sees. Like info from fdisk -l and df command. It should automount the partitions if it can. It should show filesystem type it used to mount.

Restore would be a pain if you need to keep the data. It would be easier to buy a new drive and install your windows on it first. Then install slackware and see if all works. Next install the old drive as a second drive and boot to windows and copy data you need for that back. You will need to install software that is not default from windows install. Same applies to slackware. Then boot up in slackware and mount the sda4 partition which will more than likely be sdb4 now and copy data over from that as needed. A long process but one step at a time should get you going. Easier if I was there to do it than explain the steps here.

Brian

so you all think i should maybe back-up my archives on a dvd (although that might be difficult to do since i would be running a live cd). another problem is that i cant write on the partition.
maybe i could pass the archives using a ubuntu live cd and try to connect to another computer via a cross over cable. then format the partitions and maybe install slackware12 instead?
what do you guys recommend?
i am totally confused and depressed because o this. :(

If you can't make changes to even files like fstab then you might not be able to even setup basic network connection to transfer.

If you bootup in windows is the drive space for that partition itself correct with space?

Knoppix can load into ram if you have enough ram. I forgot the steps and commands to do that.

If you have a floppy I think there is one that boots a basic kernel and has the commands for cd coping but I am guessing they are old and may not support dvd especially if writing to dvd+r media.

Have you ever thought about a usb harddrive? But then again may cause issues if drive is full. I just think the easiest is get a new drive and install to that one.

One can create a live USB on like a 1 gig usb flash drive. Many topics on that. If it boots from USB drives then easier. If not then requires a boot floppy or cd to get the USB booted from. Look into puppy linux for that.

So many options but not sure what will work and won't.
Brian

Well, that partition table in post #8 looks pretty good - about what I would expect.
I'd be using a liveCD (the Slack disk should do) to mount those partitions and check the data looked o.k. Most liveCDs will use the swap if they can see it o.k. - handy check.
Then I'd back it all up immediately - I keep a couple of USB hard disks for this sort of thing, and Knoppix as the driver disk. If you have enough RAM, you can even run the liveCD from memory, and free the drive for the backup. DSL should do likewise if you don't have a Gig of RAM.
Then I'd try and chroot into that disk setup, and see what it sees of the system. You might be pleasantly suprised.

this is what i get when i do these commands using ubuntu live cd.
[HTML]
<pre>
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ cd /mnt/lin/
ubuntu@ubuntu:/mnt/lin$ df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
unionfs 1.2G 680M 448M 61% /
varrun 506M 84K 506M 1% /var/run
varlock 506M 4.0K 506M 1% /var/lock
udev 506M 156K 506M 1% /dev
devshm 506M 0 506M 0% /dev/shm
lrm 506M 8.8M 497M 2% /lib/modules/2.6.15-23-386/volatile
tmpfs 506M 12K 506M 1% /tmp
/dev/sdb1 228M 84M 145M 37% /media/usbdisk
/dev/sda4 59G 59G 0 100% /mnt/lin
ubuntu@ubuntu:/mnt/lin$ /sbin/fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sdb: 239 MB, 239075328 bytes
16 heads, 32 sectors/track, 912 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 512 * 512 = 262144 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 * 1 911 233069+ 6 FAT16
</pre>
[/HTML]

Your linux partition is /dev/sda4. It is full up. This is probably causing all your other problems.

I would suggest that you use your live disk again, mount sda4 if it is not already, delete some stuff you dont care about, (some of that gnome stuff as it probably did not install properly anyway, and there is probably loads of junk in /tmp). Then reboot and see what happens. Your fstab may not really be empty, your system probably had no resources left to open the file.

You only got single user mode because thats all that was possible, cos the system couldn't write to disk.

Of course what the others said about backing up still holds true...

tobyl

edit: (just noticed, I'm saying basically what bsdunix said)