Showing my noobness here:

I made a "little mistake" when editing my fstab ; I entered the wrong file-system for my main-partition and re-booted....

Now I can't access that installation anymore ; the boot-up halts with some message about wrong ext2-filesystem and gives me the option to use ctrl+D to continue boot as normal , enter root psswd to fix the problem with something , called "fs2chk" (I think....)and some options , or reboot.

"Ctrl-D" only results in a reboot.
The root-login-thingy doesn't fix anything , probably due to my lack of knowledge of the particular command and in that mode , I can't find any man-pages about it either.
Reboot just gives me the entire dance again....

Anyone know how to fix this?
I already managed to make a back-up of the files.
I can mount the partition with another Vector-installation , but I can't edit the fstab-file ; everytime I try that , it spits out , the file is read-only.
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G'day guv'.
can you spare a byte for an unfortunate digibete?

Boot from a Rescue disc (something like Toms or Knoppix) and mount the partition containing your fstab as the correct filesystem type. Edit the file and save it. Reboot. Now, when your computer boots up in the usual way, it'll read the fstab with the correct information in it and will proceed as it should - hopefully with no errors at all.

You can try to mount the partition in another computer, and change the permissions for /etc/fstab from that other computer's root, and finally change the fs back to the original.

My problem is a little more complicated. I did a lot of partition moving, deleting and reallocating free space. When i boot with the rescue option, i can't mount my linux partition. I tried 'e2fsck -b nnnnn /dev/hda4' (that's the linux partition), where nnnnn are the superblocks i got running 'mke2fs -n /dev/hda4', but no luck. When i do 'fdisk /dev/hda' and then 'p', i get the following partition table:
------------------
/dev/hda1 * 1 1297 c Win95FAT32
/dev/hda2 1298 2631 c Win95FAT32
/dev/hda3 3111 9964 f Win95ext'd
/dev/hda4 2632 3110 83 Linux
/dev/hda5 3111 3143 82 Linuxswap
/dev/hda6 3144 9964 b Win95FAT32

Partition table entries are not in disk order
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Is there anything left to do to fix this without losing any data?

Thymox (And similarly UltimaGuy) : That is exactly what I tried and what resulted in the "Spitting Of The Dreaded *Read-OnlyError*(tm)"

I tried the following as well: Fresh install of Vector on the offending partition , reformatting it , and then copy back the previously mentioned Back-up files.
This doesn't appear to wotk either....

It looks like I have to do all the tuning of my system over again....

HEY!
Then YOU provide a title that :
A- Gives a good indication of the problem at hand AND....
B- Expresses to some degree of accuracy the way I feel about it AND.....
C- Still manages to stay within the number-of-characters-used-in-a-title-limit.

Good luck....

And then again ; It's quite debatable , whether the "offending" word would be rightfully catagorised as "slang".
Check your "Oxford's" and "Brittanica" ; In neither of them ,I think ,it's marked as "slang". It's a very good english word.

On the other hand one could argue the particular context it was used in , could qualify as slang , albeit it wouldn't surprise me if it's been made "official" english by now.....

Megamieuwsel, have you tried explicitely mounting the partition (with the correct filesystem) as read/write? If you use things like Knoppix, I believe they default to mounting harddrive partitions as readonly, so you'd need to remount them RW.

Oh, and I appreciate that your particular choice of word is a genuine English word - indeed, it is an Old English word originating from farming where its original meaning was to plough, hence the expression 'to fsck someone over'. However, there are alternative ways to express your feelings. English is an extremely rich language - almost certainly because it doesn't have any one root, it is a true mongrel of many root languages - and so you have a huge variety of way to express your emotions. This site is not censored, but is monitored closely by the excellent Moderators here. I would suggest that a word that could closely match your criteria would be knackered, ie "How to fix a knackered partition?". Much less likely to cause offense.

How about, "How to fix my partition?", or "How to fix my messed up partition?", or "How to fix my broken partition?" or how about just using a title that might not offend others with your choice of words. Also along with just obeying the site rules and the moderator, with their requests. Your title falls under the category of obscene and vulgar.... and you showed no respect to my polite suggestion to use something other than the word you used in your title.

If you don't agree with the rules and dont' want to show any respect to the site, its rules, members and moderators who are also members, then well, don't post at all.

If you feel you need to argue your weak case, feel free to email me or the site admin who created these rules when using HIS site. But don't post your thoughts here as this matter is closed now in the public forum. If you post here, I will be forced to edit or close this thread, as I've asked nicely for an email to continue this discussion regarding your title.

Regards.

Hmmm.. didn't know that.
Good to know for when something like this happens again.
As for this particular case: the point has become moot , since I went ahead with a fresh install and re-doing the adjustments.
Good thing is , I have made back-ups of everything I downloaded for that , so that's a lot of time I save.(Gotta love them modern oversized harddisks. )

Another note: Since I tried to re-invoke the error with a new install(deliberately messing up the fstab) and that did NOT have the same result , I have to assume , it wasn't in the fstab in the first place.
Appears , something on a much deeper level was going bonkers.
Now ; if only I knew , WHAT it was that went haywire....

(TrickyKid : You have mail)