Password mess
 

I recently was unable to add a new user to my fedora core three system and was reading a thread in a different forum about a possible fix. Basically, I should have researched the advice before I meddled, because when they told me to delete the /etc/shadow file and run pwconv (which ran with no errors) I didn't expect that to destroy any way of me logging onto my system.

So now, I can't logon to my system, because it can't recognize any passwords. I made a backup file of my /etc/shadow and /etc/passwords file, so I know of a fix, I just can't get to it.

I am using Knoppix (Linux on CD) to try and access those files and replace them with the backup copies. When knoppix loads up, it can mount all my partitions except the one I need. When I try issuing a mount command

mount /dev/hdc2 /mnt/hdc2

it tells me I need to specify the filesystem type. So I used fdisk to see what the file system type of hdc was. It gave me

/dev/hdc2 ..... Linux LVM

I can't seem to find any information on how to mount a linux logical volume management partition, and frankly, I'm not really sure what that is.

Any help on mounting this with Knoppix? Thanks in advance to anyone who can help.

possible solution
 

I have a small bit of info for you. Try editing the grub.conf but I dont know how you would using a live linux cd. If not maybe try a diff live linux cd, or a bootable win cd.

I'm not quite sure I get where you are going with grub. How is the boot loader going to help with my linux passwords? Or mounting a linux lvm paritition?

I'm still confused about how to do this. I just need to copy two files back to their original locations, and I can't seem to mount this. I mean it's a linux hard drive, I assume it should be able to be mounted, and I don't know what Linux LVM means in terms of file systems or mounting. I've racking my brain for hours, any ideas???

For anyone wondering, I solved the problem. I just needed to learn a little bit more about LVM. Turns out, you don't mount the hard drive specifically, instead you need to look for the volume group name (should be a directory in you /dev directory) and then inside that are the logical volumes created within the volume group. These are just easily mounted and then you can browse and change as necesary.