inittab is broken

supermatt · 11-22-2003, 12:44 PM

Hi,

I recently instsalled the newset version of XFree86, and once i restarted my x server, it just hung ( i got to a blue background and the watch mouse pointer thingy) i could move my mouse but nothing happened,

so i thought i'd be clever, i started windows XP ( i dual boot) and through partition magic, editted my /etc/inittab so that it said id:3:initdefault and then saved it, now whenever i try to start redhat, i get an error message say can't execute /etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit and a couple other errors, and then it says id"(1-6)": respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes.
(by (1-6) i mean there is a line with each of those id's on it).
if i change the runlevel back to 5 it doesn't change the error message. i am running redhat 8, have had the system up for a while so i really don't want to reformat. could someone PLEASE help me??

thanks in advance,
-Matt

CyberMacro · 11-22-2003, 01:04 PM

I don't know the solution, the only thing I can think of, is that Partition Magic did something completely wrong to your partition table. Try to get a inittab file from someone else... Good luck.

fsbooks · 11-22-2003, 01:06 PM

First, the line should read: "id:3:initdefault:" --note the trailing ":" though perhaps that is only a typo on your post.

It sounds a little like a permissions problem with the "can't execute" command. Perhaps they were changed with the XP magic. But what you need to do is to get yourself a root prompt. Use your boot disk and then mount up your harddrive partitions. You might then beable to chroot and do an rpm --verify Or I think you can specify the path of the database with rpm.

Perhaps this will get you started? Do not reinstall -- that is for MS windows.

supermatt · 11-22-2003, 01:09 PM

i don't know where to get an inittab, i have compared mine to others (like in knoppix) and all the parts are the same, should i maybe add a line like "mount /dev/ataraid/h0p3 /" ataraid /h0p3 is my root drive for linux, if you or anybody could send me a /etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit file, or /etc/inittab file that could work with redhat 8 that would be wonderful

Thanks in advance,
-Matt

fsbooks · 11-22-2003, 01:23 PM

These are RH9, but maybe they will help. I suppose I could extract the default RH8 files from an rpm, but someone can probably make them available to you.

ftp://ku.wru.umt.edu/pub/outgoing/inittab
ftp://ku.wru.umt.edu/pub/outgoing/rc.sysinit

MartinN · 11-22-2003, 05:25 PM

Hi!

This is /etc/inittab from RedHat8:

Code:

#
# inittab       This file describes how the INIT process should set up
#               the system in a certain run-level.
#
# Author:       Miquel van Smoorenburg, <miquels@drinkel.nl.mugnet.org>
#               Modified for RHS Linux by Marc Ewing and Donnie Barnes
#

# Default runlevel. The runlevels used by RHS are:
#   0 - halt (Do NOT set initdefault to this)
#   1 - Single user mode
#   2 - Multiuser, without NFS (The same as 3, if you do not have networking)
#   3 - Full multiuser mode
#   4 - unused
#   5 - X11
#   6 - reboot (Do NOT set initdefault to this)
#
id:3:initdefault:

# System initialization.
si::sysinit:/etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit

l0:0:wait:/etc/rc.d/rc 0
l1:1:wait:/etc/rc.d/rc 1
l2:2:wait:/etc/rc.d/rc 2
l3:3:wait:/etc/rc.d/rc 3
l4:4:wait:/etc/rc.d/rc 4
l5:5:wait:/etc/rc.d/rc 5
l6:6:wait:/etc/rc.d/rc 6

# Things to run in every runlevel.
ud::once:/sbin/update

# Trap CTRL-ALT-DELETE
ca::ctrlaltdel:/sbin/shutdown -t3 -r now

# When our UPS tells us power has failed, assume we have a few minutes
# of power left.  Schedule a shutdown for 2 minutes from now.
# This does, of course, assume you have powerd installed and your
# UPS connected and working correctly.
pf::powerfail:/sbin/shutdown -f -h +2 "Power Failure; System Shutting Down"

# If power was restored before the shutdown kicked in, cancel it.
pr:12345:powerokwait:/sbin/shutdown -c "Power Restored; Shutdown Cancelled"


# Run gettys in standard runlevels
1:2345:respawn:/sbin/mingetty tty1
2:2345:respawn:/sbin/mingetty tty2
3:2345:respawn:/sbin/mingetty tty3
4:2345:respawn:/sbin/mingetty tty4
5:2345:respawn:/sbin/mingetty tty5
6:2345:respawn:/sbin/mingetty tty6

# Run xdm in runlevel 5
# xdm is now a separate service
x:5:respawn:/etc/X11/prefdm -nodaemon

Let me know if you need /etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit too. That file is considerably larger.

Regards
Martin

supermatt · 11-23-2003, 10:23 AM

my inittab and rc.sysinit match everything posted, i think my problem is file permissions, the only thing is i don't know how to change the permissions on the files. i tried booting up in single and chmod-ing them but it says changing permissions, blah... : Read-Only File-Systemso i tried su-ing things and same error, if anybody can tell me how to get around this that would be great, thanks in advance
-Matt

MartinN · 11-23-2003, 11:57 AM

* Boot your system from a rescue floppy or possibly your installation CD. If you don't have a rescue disk, then you could try this one: http://www.toms.net/rb/

* Mount the filesystem.

* Change the permissions.

Do you know how to do this? If not, I'll try to help you through.

Regards
Martin

WJWhite · 01-24-2004, 02:16 PM

I am recieving simmilar messages when i first boot my small linux laptop. Only mine refers to
Id "c1" respawning to fast: disabled for five minutes

the c1 id in my inittab is for tty0

and

no more processes left in this run level