RH9 /proc/mounts boot failure!!
 

I installed some patches (all but kernel) and now my box won't come up.

It inits hardware just fine and then fails to mount. Can't find /proc/mount - says no such file. Bad file descriptor.

Dumps me to a shell.

What would be the Linux equiv. to scandisk or diskchk or ... ?!?

I have users waiting! Help greatly appreciated!

T.I.A.

More info.

fsck /dev/hd1 returns Couldn't open proc partitions.

now what?

I can see the hd through ls.

ran fsck.ext3 on /dev/hda1 returns could not open /dev/null (read only filesystem)
Auughgh! and my disks are 20 miles away! stupid,stupid, stupid.....!

The first failed line is:

mounting proc filesystem dup2: Bad file descriptor

What does that mean?

Also, I have a boot floppy, but no fd drive. I have a usb drive.. how can I mount it to access it?

T.I.A.

Okay. I've figured out what I did to break it.

shutdown now -- without the -h option

so that must have crashed my disk.

now. I found instructions on how to recover a ext2 partition with superblock repairing. And then the book said that ext3 (wich is my part. type) does not need this because of journaling and that I won't ever have to do it. Okay. So WHAT do I do?!?

The phone is ringing off the hook. Due to policy, the computers are down w/out network validation.

Okay all my files in the proc directory are gone. I have no backups.

Any ideas? I do not really know how to use any text editor in the shell. And cannot startx.

T.I.A.

Can you do an RH9 install over a current install? or do you loose all your config files and password files and user database?