I tried to post this thread yesterday, but I seem to have failed. Apologies if this is a duplicate.

For some time I've been successfully booting my aging Slackware 10 system with an installation CD using the command:

huge.s root=/dev/hda2 rdinit= ro

However, in a moment of distraction I mistyped the command and messed up the boot process and am now trying to get it back again.

/dev/hda2 is a Reiser filesystem, but the boot process may not be recognizing that. The errors I've been getting are somewhat contradictory, but at first I got complaints about a missing superblock on the root filesystem and was dumped into a single-user shell and / didn't seem to be mounted.

I issued the command:

reiserfsck --check

The result was "No corruptions found." The boot process repeated, again the single-user shell was offered, but this time /dev/hda2 seemed to be mounted as / with all files present and readable.

However, if the boot process continues from that point, I get another error:

"Cannot find / in /etc/fstab or /etc/mtab"

and a return to the single-user shell. Indeed this is correct: /etc/fstab is a mess and does not mention /.

What should I try now? Your suggestions are appreciated. Thanks!

Why does fstab "not mention /" ?

In addition to RadicalDreamer's question, why were you using an installation disk to boot? Is there something that caused your normal booting to not work?

Booting Slackware from 2004 continuously off a CD, hmmm..

A suggestion. Perhaps it is time to upgrade to a newer version of Slackware? Slackware 10 hit end of life on August 1, 2012.

Thanks for your replies.

As to why / is not mentioned in /etc/fstab, I have no idea. It used to be. Is it possible that the failed attempts at booting trashed the file? Two empty files called fstab and fstab1 have appeared in /tmp; perhaps these are also attempts by the boot process to recreate /etc/fstab?

I can try to recreate /etc/fstab from the single-user shell, but I don't want to cause any more problems. Would it be advisible to do this?

What are your computer specs?

I don't see why fixing fstab would hurt. Others might have a different opinion but I don't see why. You could save a back up copy of it. It would be easy to set it back to the main copy. I'd boot off the cd without putting in the root parameters in and mount hda2 and try fixing it. Why are you using a cd instead of lilo or grub to boot? Something wrong with mbr?

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It shouldn't be an issue if you add items to /etc/fstab. But I don't think there's anything that would try and recreate the file (except for the installer, which it doesn't sound like you were running).

It would be more interesting to find out how it got trashed in the first place. If you're booting Slackware 10, I would assume this system is old. Even though ReiserFS hasn't detected any problems, is there a chance your harddrive, cable, PSU, or motherboard might be going out?

Yes, as everyone who has been kind enough to reply has suggested, Slackware 10 is old, but the hardware on this machine is older still. Is the MBR messed up? Wouldn't be surprised but don't know. The system used to boot from the hard drive, but one day it refused to and booting from the CD was the quickest way to get it up again.

This strategy has worked for several years until now when I mistyped the command to the CD with this mess resulting. Fortunately, there is already a backup of /etc/fstab, which just needs to be copied into place, but I'm not sure if I should write to /dev/hda2 from the single-user shell since it seems to be only "half mounted."

RadicalDreamer, are you suggesting rebooting from the CD with the command of "huge.s" only? I have searched but cannot find information about which parameters the CD will accept.

Thanks!

Just boot the cd without putting anything in, login as root after it gets done booting. Then and do your stuff in terminal. Then and reboot.

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Considering that the boot process has been very confused and that /etc/fstab is missing, would it be a good idea to explicitly mount /dev/hda2 as reiserfs?

mount -t reiserfs /dev/hda2 /mnt/hd

Thanks!

Reinstall lilo and add it again to the mbr?

Thanks, RadicalDreamer, this seems to have worked.

Now how do I mark this problem solved?

You are welcome, the option is above your first post in the thread.

We may be able to get your computer to boot with lilo and mbr if you want to try.

Thanks, got another project first (trying to get a tethered smartphone running as a mobile hot spot to work, the phone supports it, not so sure about the hardware and software on the machine).

In case someone with a similar problem comes upon this thread, wanted to mention a couple of things I had to do differently. Had to boot from the CD as huge.s since Slackware 10 seems to default to kernel hugesmp, which the hardware on this machine never has been able to support. And had to mount /dev/hda2 into /tmp since the /mnt directory (on the CD?) has a file with warnings not to mount anything there. Other than that, great!

Thanks to everyone who helped resolve this problem and onto the tethered smartphone.