FSTAB help on a read only partition
 

I'm not sure what happened, but when I was building and compiling a custom kernel, my fstab is saying that hda3 is ro, which I'm assuming means read-only. I can't figure out how to get hda3 to stop being readonly. I can't copy fstab to my FAT32 partition, edit it and move it back because it's readonly, it won't let me copy over the existing file. ANy ideas? I have a Suse 9.1 live cd, but it doesn't recognize the partitions on my hard drive. I need help.

Open a console and run:

$ kdesu kwrite /etc/fstab

Enter your root password when prompted and kwrite will come up with root privileges displaying fstab. You will then be able to edit fstab and save the changes. If your partition that your having trouble with is hda3, edit the line like so:

/dev/hda3 <insert mount point> vfat umask=0,iocharset=iso8859-1,codepage=850,quiet 0 0

That will give you read/write access to the partition and will take effect next time you boot.

even though I have to enter my root password ot get into linux at all. I'm sorry my original post was quite confusing. The partition I'm having trouble with is my ext3 partition. I can't change my fstab because it's readonly. Will the previous prcedure still work?

No that's only for fat32. If the live cd doesn't see the partition, the filesystem might be trashed or the partition table corrupted. Try knoppix or another livecd and see if they can see the partition.

if not should I download the base install system again? then I could reinstall and start over. Is there any way to take the packages that I already have and put them on the new install?
Any other ideas?

That's probably the easiest way. You might want to consider using reiserfs instead of ext3. It's much more resistant to file system corruption in the event of hard shut downs, etc. I haven't used debian in a while, but depending on how you have the system configured I believe that debian stores packages that have been downloaded and installed in a certain directory. If you can still access that directory you could conceivably save the contents so you wouldn't have to redownload.

do you get an error 'bout failing fsck at bootup?

to remount a filesystem rw:
mount -n -o remount,rw /
make changes and reboot soon.

have you compiled the new kernel with everything (fs related: no modules) you need?
if you get logging 'bout missing fsck libs - then install fsck static.

sl mritch.

I had major issues after doing a kernel compile and after a couple of days I gave up and re-installed. What I did was resize a partition to make room and then installed debian again. Dont delete your old ext3 partition though. Then once you have your new system up and going then you can go into your old partition and copy over and install all your packages from /var/cache/apt. If you have cable then just wipe it all and start again. The only reason that I did it was cause I couldnt get on cable and my dial up is even slower than most.

Thanks,

I downloaded the netinstall cd, and will be getting the packages today. Thanks for all the help from everyone.

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