fstab issues after installation

Fjord · 08-14-2005, 03:52 PM

Hi All,

New poster here. Glad to be aboard. I found this place because I was looking for an answer to a probelm with the Fedora installation.

My history is this. While I would not even suggest that I am an expert in any way I do use Solaris on a daily basis at work. I have this old server at home that I wanted to turn into a SAN using SAMBA.

The question is this, I went through the installation of the most recent version of Fedora that I got from RedHat and upon reboot I found that swap will not mount. Upon further investigation, watching the boot messages I see that there is an error on line 15 of the /etc/fstab file:

LABEL=ATB^F^C¢á
¨@^F^F *P swap swap defaults 0 0

I have not edited this file in any way. This corruption happened at some point between install and boot. Are there any suggestions? I have tried to install Fedora twice with the same problem each time. Even the line looks the same. Thank you in advance for any help. I look forward to learning alot from you all.

aikidoist72 · 08-14-2005, 07:27 PM

I would suggest editing your fstab file. As a guide, here is mine

Code:

#Slackware 10.1
/dev/hda1        /boot		ext3	    defaults         1   1
/dev/hda3        /home		reiserfs    defaults         1   1
/dev/hda4        /data		reiserfs    defaults         1   2
/dev/hda5        /		reiserfs    defaults         0   1
/dev/hda6        swap		swap        defaults         0   0
/dev/hda7        /var		reiserfs    defaults         1   2
/dev/hda8        /opt		reiserfs    defaults         1   2
/dev/hda9        /usr		reiserfs    defaults         1   2

As long as you have the correct partitions, you should be set. Once edited, reboot and see what happens IE: if your installation is rewriting the file etc.

To find out your partitions try

Code:

fdisk -l

Cheers

Fjord · 08-14-2005, 10:24 PM

here is the contents of my fstab:

LABEL=/ / ext3 defaults 1 1
LABEL=/boot /boot ext3 defaults 1 2
/dev/devpts /dev/pts devpts gid=5,mode=620 0 0
/dev/shm /dev/shm tmpfs defaults 0 0
LABEL=/home /home ext3 defaults 1 2
LABEL=/opt /opt ext3 defaults 1 2
/dev/proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
/dev/sys /sys sysfs defaults 0 0
LABEL=/tmp /tmp ext3 defaults 1 2
LABEL=/usr /usr ext3 defaults 1 2
LABEL=/usr/local /usr/local ext3 defaults 1 2
LABEL=/var /var ext3 defaults 1 2
LABEL=ATB^F^C¢á
¨@^F^F *P swap swap defaults 0 0
/dev/fd0 /media/floppy auto pamconsole,exec,noauto,managed 0 0
/dev/hdc /media/cdrom auto pamconsole,exec,noauto,managed 0 0

not only do i want to know how to fix this problem, I want to know the why. much the padawan i am, much to learn i have

looking at your response, i am not sure how to make the necessary changes to my fstab. it is the label part that is confusing me.

fdisk -l yields:
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hdb1 * 1 13 104391 83 Linux
/dev/hdb2 14 395 3068415 83 Linux
/dev/hdb3 396 777 3068415 83 Linux
/dev/hdb4 778 2534 14113102+ 5 Extended
/dev/hdb5 778 1032 2048256 83 Linux
/dev/hdb6 1033 1287 2048256 83 Linux
/dev/hdb7 1288 1418 1052226 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/hdb8 1419 1545 1020096 83 Linux
/dev/hdb9 1546 1672 1020096 83 Linux
/dev/hdb10 1673 2534 6923983+ 83 Linux

the interesting thing is that the listed swap dev is labeled solaris. thanks again.

aikidoist72 · 08-15-2005, 12:50 AM

Firstly I would replace the line in your fstab to this

Code:

 LABEL=/ / ext3 defaults 1 1
 LABEL=/boot /boot ext3 defaults 1 2
 /dev/devpts /dev/pts devpts gid=5,mode=620 0 0
 /dev/shm /dev/shm tmpfs defaults 0 0
 LABEL=/home /home ext3 defaults 1 2
 LABEL=/opt /opt ext3 defaults 1 2
 /dev/proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
 /dev/sys /sys sysfs defaults 0 0
 LABEL=/tmp /tmp ext3 defaults 1 2
 LABEL=/usr /usr ext3 defaults 1 2
 LABEL=/usr/local /usr/local ext3 defaults 1 2
 LABEL=/var /var ext3 defaults 1 2
 /dev/hdb7 swap swap defaults 0 0
 /dev/fd0 /media/floppy auto pamconsole,exec,noauto,managed 0 0
 /dev/hdc /media/cdrom auto pamconsole,exec,noauto,managed 0 0

Next I would issue

Code:

df -h

Read the output and replace the "LABEL=/YYY" to /dev/hdXX where XX equals your output. The file fstab is designed to link a partition to a file/folder. Your partitions were labeled during install, so your distro is using this instead of the device address (/dev/hdxx).

Basically you want this

Code:

<partition>     <Folder>      <type>    <mount options>  <these two numbers leave as the default for your setup>
/dev/hda3        /home          reiserfs    defaults         1   1

Always keep a backup of your fstab. If all fails, you can rename it using a live-cd to get back to your existing setup

PeterRJG · 08-15-2005, 05:12 PM

This happened to me as well when I installed FC4. It added non-US ASCII characters to /etc/fstab at the swap line which naturally generated errors everytime it booted.

Easy enough to edit out, but just wondering why this happens.

molecularbear · 11-03-2005, 08:55 PM

I had this same problem - manually editing /etc/fstab as the previous poster suggests will fix the problem. This is just a guess, but I think the cause has to do with funky bits in the disk's volume labels. It seems that FC4 tried to use volume labels instead of /dev references when possible. For example, my root partition:

Code:

LABEL=/                 /                       ext3    defaults        1 1

If my understanding is correct, the labels are stored in the boot sector of the harddrive. My guess is that either the label for my swap partition was never written, or somehow the label became corrupted. Either way, garbage characters would be obtained from the boot sector and written in /etc/fstab.

jcliburn · 11-04-2005, 07:21 AM

This is a known bug in the Fedora installer.

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla....cgi?id=159087

Just edit fstab and execute 'swapon -a' to ensure swap is running.