Thanks for keeping up with me. The current situation is my suse boots fine as this is the second distro i installed, making its root partition /dev/hda5, while redhat is giving me the error because it is looking to /dev/hda5. The error is:

/dev/hda5
The superblock could not be read or does not describe a correct ext2 filesystem..... [there is more here, but it is a little wrong I can get it if you need it]
e2fsck -b 8193 <device>
fsck.ext3: Bad magic number in super-block while trying to open /dev/hda5 [failed]


Hopefully that means something to you.

Ok, I managed to find the solution to this problem and now I have another one. I just had to edit the fstab file accoringly so it wouldn't try to mount /dev/hda5 in the wrong way.

Now I need to fix X, I'll probably be back
thanks

I am now to the point where I get the error:

Id "x" respawning too fast: respawning in 5 minutes

I found somewhere, where they suggested running redhat-config-xfree86, but I can't seem to do it from Suse because I don't have permission, and when I get myself to a prompt at startup, using crtl-alt-f1, things are mounted so nothing seems to run right (ie I run red.... and get the error: can't find libglib..., which I checked and it was where it is supposed to be)

It appears, as an aside, that without thinking, the parittion that I re-formatted and used for suse contained my home folder, which had my bash profile. I moved all the contents to the root directory, but certain bash commands won't work (ie I tried to run startx and got -bash not a command). I don't know if this affects things.

Anyway, i am tired and appreciate any thoughts.

First off, I would avoid trying to reconfigure Redhat from within Suse, unless you really know what you're doing (especially using a Gui), as you may end up overwriting bits of your Suse configuration.

If you've moved your home folder within Redhat, then you'll need to edit /etc/passwd to reflect the change, or (once you stop X from respawning) run redhat-config-users to change the home directory. /etc/fstab may also have a missing partition in it that may need deleting, and /etc/profile may need editing by the sounds of it.

To run redhat-config-xfree86, boot Redhat, then switch to another console if necessary, login as root, and then use the absolute path to run it.

Cheers,

mj

I am not sure what you mean by editing those files. I don't see anything in there to describe where my home directory is. Please explain more.

I tried the redhat-config-users and got "cannot open shared object file"

I also found startx and tried to start it directly, but got the same error:

"error while loading shared libraries. Cannot open shared object file. No such file or directory"

This is usually some lib file, which I go and look and find. Is this a mounting problem?

Are you quite sure that all you did is move your *home* directory from one partition to another ? It sounds rather like you may have moved/deleted a lot more :)

The second-to-last field in /etc/passwd is your home directory. /etc/profile lists the path that your shell will use to search for executables. But then again, if all you've moved is your home directory, then it shouldn't need to be edited... You should also check /etc/fstab to make sure you aren't mounting anything important at some strange point.

root:x:0:0:root:/root:/bin/bash
bin:x:1:1:bin:/bin:/bin/bash
daemon:x:2:2:Daemon:/sbin:/bin/bash
lp:x:4:7:Printing daemon:/var/spool/lpd:/bin/bash
mail:x:8:12:Mailer daemon:/var/spool/clientmqueue:/bin/false
games:x:12:100:Games account:/var/games:/bin/bash
wwwrun:x:30:8:WWW daemon apache:/var/lib/wwwrun:/bin/false
ftp:x:40:49:FTP account:/srv/ftp:/bin/bash
nobody:x:65534:65533:nobody:/var/lib/nobody:/bin/bash
~

This is my /etc/passwd file. I am pretty sure that when I typed $HOME, when linux was working, in a terminal it would take me to /home/tscharner, which /home was a mount point that I moved to /dev/hda2. I don't see anything in here that looks like a $HOME directory. Thanks for your patience.

/dev/hda2 / ext3 defaults 1 1
/dev/hda1 /boot ext3 defaults 1 2
/dev/hda6 /usr auto noauto,user 0 0
/dev/hda5 /suse ext3 noauto,user 0 0
/dev/hda3 swap swap pri=42 0 0
devpts /dev/pts devpts mode=0620,gid=5 0 0
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
usbfs /proc/bus/usb usbfs noauto 0 0
sysfs /sys sysfs noauto 0 0
/dev/cdrecorder /media/cdrecorder subfs fs=cdfss,ro,procuid,nosuid,nodev,exec,iocharset=utf8 0 0
/dev/fd0 /media/floppy subfs fs=floppyfss,procuid,nodev,nosuid,sync 0 0

There is something that I just notice when trying to startup RedHat, I get the error:

NFS subfs is not a supported ...

it goes by quickly, but I thought maybe my problems are in the fstab file. Here is what mine looks like. The /suse mount is my old /home mount point. Other than that all the other mount points are for RedHat. Something I noticed the last time I looked at this file was that the one that is mounted at /usr right now, was showing it mounted on /data1. I changed it because it used to be mounted at /usr.

Hopefully my problem is hidden in here. Any thoughts?

NFS is networked file system - not important unless you are wanting to mount drives on remote systems.

When did the mount point for hda6 change from /usr to /data1 -- at the time of the Suse installation, or at some other time ? When did it _use_ to be mounted at /usr -- right up until the Suse install ? If it did change at this time, then it seems likely that hda5, and/or hda6 could have been written to during the install (unlikely, but possible if Suse came up with some strange default mount points that ran by unnoticed). If this is the case, then you could have a right mixed-up old system, at least on the Redhat side...

hda6 was mounted to /usr before I installed suse, and after it changed to /data1. Suse seems to continue to work fine, adn I am okay getting rid of it and starting over if that is necesary.

Now when you say it could be messed up, hopefully we don't mean irrevocably. If necessary, I can copy my important data and try to re-install redhat, but for obvious reasons this is not ideal..

What is actually in /usr (or /data1) on your Redhat partition ? The only reason that it might automatically change it's mount point would be if you reformated hda6 during your Suse installation...

I'd carefully check the Suse and Redhat /etc/fstab's, and see what's mounted where, and ensure that there isn't (or wasn't !) a conflict of interest over hda6.

Pretty much every program and library is in there.

Is there a log file for the start up so I can see all the failed responses. Here is one that I was able to see before it went away:

updating /etc/fstab execvp No such file or directory [FAILED]

I am not sure why it says this, since fstab is definitely in /etc. I am wondering if my fstab is messed up or if it just isn't reading it, because the more I search I find people talking about a messed up fstab, but without solutions.

Yes, but do the files/programs in hda6 belong to Redhat or Suse...? I can't think why your Redhat fstab would change, unless Suse had written to it. This would also make sense wrt. your earlier error messages. What does your Suse /etc/fstab have to say ?

/dev/hda5 / reiserfs acl,user_xattr 1 1
/dev/hda1 /data1 auto noauto,user 0 0
/dev/hda2 /data2 auto noauto,user 0 0
/dev/hda6 /data3 auto noauto,user 0 0
/dev/hda3 swap swap pri=42 0 0
devpts /dev/pts devpts mode=0620,gid=5 0 0
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
usbfs /proc/bus/usb usbfs noauto 0 0
sysfs /sys sysfs noauto 0 0
/dev/cdrecorder /media/cdrecorder subfs fs=cdfss,ro,procuid,nosuid,nodev,exec,iocharset=utf8 0 0
/dev/fd0 /media/floppy subfs fs=floppyfss,procuid,nodev,nosuid,sync 0 0
~

This is the suse fstab and

/dev/hda2 / ext3 defaults 1 1
/dev/hda1 /boot ext3 defaults 1 2
/dev/hda6 /usr auto noauto,user 0 0
/dev/hda5 /suse ext3 acl,user_xattr 0 0
/dev/hda3 swap swap pri=42 0 0
devpts /dev/pts devpts mode=0620,gid=5 0 0
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
usbfs /proc/bus/usb usbfs noauto 0 0
sysfs /sys sysfs noauto 0 0
/dev/cdrecorder /media/cdrecorder subfs fs=cdfss,ro,procuid,nosuid,nodev,exec,iocharset=utf8 0 0
/dev/fd0 /media/floppy subfs fs=floppyfss,procuid,nodev,nosuid,sync 0 0
~

this is my redhat fstab.

I don't see anything strange other than the fact that what I have changed to /usr on my redhat fstab, seems to have been changed to data1.

I understand what you are saying about writing to it, and I agree I don't know why suse would have done that, but I know that all the libraries and programs that I find in that /dev/hda6 are what i used to get to through /usr, which I thought was the mount I had created for it at install. Maybe I was wrong. Either way it doesn't work with it as /usr or /data1

You're right - it looks ok. Something has definitely gone amiss with hda6 though, and it could be a bit of a bother to find out what.

I'm loathe to say it, but the easy option would be to just backup any important files from your Redhat partition, and then reinstall Redhat into hda1/hda2... watching carefully to see that nothing is written to any other partition.

Cheers,

mj