Okay, so I recently screwed something up, an i am not quite sure how to fix it. I am running a FC5 machine. Originally it only had the kernel that came with the install disks. I had done a kernel update using yum update kernel, and it updated to 2.6.16-1.2204_FC6
Originally I had not noticed the FC6 at the end of the Kernel update, and I do not know why it would happen (is it possible that a yum upgrade kernel would have done this, perhaps I mistypes it, or perhaps I got it from a development repository). I had been confused because for a couple days after updating the kernel I still could not find NTFS support for this kernel, thinking it was a FC5 kernel. Because of this I booted into the original FC5 kernel because I wanted to listen to music on my NTFS drive.
I started noticing problems when I would update using the Yum extender and the same packages would stay on the yum update list no matter how many times I would run update, and the output would say successful finish. So I updated each package individually using yum on the command line.
After that is when my problems started (remember I did the update from the old kernel).
The next time I tried to boot the computer I let it boot into the new kernel, and it would get to where it says:
Enabling swap space: tem quotas: write mode: [OK}

And it hangs indefinitely. It never enters run level 5.
When I try to boot in the old kernel everything says that it started okay, but after all the start up information I get a blank screen, it never makes it to the log in screen.

I tried putting in the install disks, and running an update, but it didn't do anything.

Any help? Is there a way I could get to command line and try to do some recovery? If I could do that what would I need to get rid of or update in order to get it working right? I would like to be able to get the system working without losing any of my data (So I don't want to do a reinstall unless someone could point me to instructions of access my ext3 drive from Windows and taking my data from it.)

Thanks for the help.

JuanitoWilder

When your GRUB brings up, press "e" on the selected fedora kernel, then again "e" on the second line, where kernel arguments are typed, and type there "3", then esc, and "b", you should now boot into runlevel 3.

To get access to your existing ext3/ext2 drives from windows use http://www.fs-driver.org/

Good luck!

thanks, I will try it out

jdwilder

when I try to use IFS from to access my ext3 from Windows it always asks me to format the disk because it thinks it is not formatted. The first time I tried to run the IFS setup windoze restarted in the middle of setup and then when it restarted it told me that some stop error had occurred. Is is possible that this caused some error in my log file since it was not able to do a clean shutdown? I do not think this is the case, because I am able to log into run level three in Fedora and access everything, but I don't know what the problem would be?

The problem may be in IFS, or cause installation was interrupted by windoze, anyway, I heard that someone also had problems with IFS. Anyway, you can also try commandline tool http://e2fsprogs.sourceforge.net/ext2.html