i want to be able to retrieve data from a harddisk (has RH 7.? on it) by connecting it to my PC (running RH 8.0).
to do that i created an additional entry in /etc/fstab:
/dev/hdb1 blah ext3 defaults 1 2

after connecting the disk to my machine and booting, i ran into troubles:
for some reason the boot process stops when trying to access the new
disk. it gives the following error:
/dev/hdb1 contains a file system with errors, check forced.
/boot: clean, 53/26104 files, 22452/104391 blocks.
/dev/hdb1: Inode 3090595 is too big.
/dev/hdb1: UNEXPECTED INCONSISTENCY; RUN fsck MANUALLY

and then gives me this prompt:
(Repair filesystem)1#

i'm not sure what to do at that point.

in principle i think removing the entry in /etc/fstab should get me
going again, i guess. but since i can't get a command line ......

also, is rebooting the only way for changes in /etc/fstab to take
effect or is there another way?

thx!
-m

Hi!

If you have your RedHat 8 installation CDs at hand, use them to boot your system. Type 'linux rescue' at the boot prompt.

Maybe the file system on the old HDD isn't ext3 but ext2 or something?

You could have mounted it manually instead of putting it in fstab.
~> mount −t <fstype> /dev/hdb1 blah
To know what file system type is on your disk, type
~> /sbin/fdisk -l

Regards
Martin

Your second hard disk has errors. Becoz you added the fstab entry, fsck automatically checks that drive. fsck runs with -a flag (automatically repair) and it is not being able to do so.
When dropped to the shell, you can run fsck on the drive manually. Ask for interactive repair of file system.
Remember to be careful with FS repair. Is the hard disk spoilt (bad sectors etc) or just had a hard reboot? fsck sd be able to repair the FS if there is no major problem.
Remember to read "man fsck".

Better to remove the fstab entry for the hard disk. Run fsck on hdb after booting into your system. Dont run fsck on the mounted partition .

Bhaskar.