vmware recovery
 

My vmware workstation running Fedora-7 has failed to boot after I have issued the command: yum remove libxml2.
When booting, it says: Error 15: File not found. Press any key to continue... and stays there.
I have searched and found that some people have had this problem before, but mine is a bit different because there is no recovery mode in the virtual machine. I am afraid I might loose my files in that virtual machine which fails to boot.
Can you please help me on how I can recover my virtual machine system.

You've made two errors: removing software while Yum clearly suggests by the amount of dependencies to remove that you shouldn't and running a stale version of Fedora. Unless this installation is not connected to any network, after you've recovered your VM guest, please consider installing the newest version (F16 should be out RSN) or switching to a Linux distribution with a less demanding update regime. That said try to boot the VM guest using an installer CD, chroot into the installed location, ensure network is up and run 'yum install libxml2'. If you can't get network download libxml2 outside of the VM and access it attaching removable USB media (or a fake floppy or CDROM file).

Well in that case you should try booting your machine in single user mode or rescue mode
and when you get a shell to work on
simply install libxml2 through yum or you can wget the package

(well I have not tried this one practically but it might help)

Best of luck:)

How do I boot the VM guest using an installer CD, I mean the VMWare workstation provide the options of booting from an existing VM and to create a new VM. So when I choose to boot from existing VM, it gives that error(Error 15: File not found). I cant find an option to boot from a live CD.

I tried to boot from single user mode by adding "single" at end of kernel line in the boot options, but its like it does not allow that because it gives the same error: Error 15: File not found

well then boot from the installer DVD

as soon as the vmware starts you will get the image which I have attached:

so just enter the boot menu and select the DVDRW option as your first boot device

Then you can enter the rescue mode

and manually install the missing package:)

Thank you deep27ak, I have been able to boot in rescue mode (i was previously unable to get into boot menu...the menu appears for just a short time). But now when i'm in the rescue mode I am unable to install libxml2 as shown in the attached image.
The 8Gb device sda is where i installed my crashed VM.
How do I make libxml2 to be installed in the directory where I have my vm installed. I tried to mount the sda1 and install libxml2 in the mount directory but i could not succeed. I even did the chroot as unSpawn suggested but i got unlucky!
When I do fdisk -l /dev/sda1, I get: Disk /dev/sda1 doesn't contain a valid partition table

The VMDK (if you're inside your VM guest) contains two partitions: /dev/sda1 which only contains GRUB and /dev/sda2 which contains a LVM which you enable running 'vgchange -ay' after which 'dmsetup status' shows partitions to mount.

Ok, I think I can see progress. I read this http://www.fedoraforum.org/forum/arc...p/t-64964.html and I have been able to mount the LVM, and I can see all my files in the crashed VM!
I chroot to the directory where LVM is mounted, and the prompt changed to sh-3.2#; in this prompt its like most commands like ls, yum etc. are not known, so I was unable to install the libxml2 package that I had in my crashed vm.
The other thing is that now when booting from live CD, I think the network is not up, although i'm connected on the LAN and vmware still says its connected, its bridged. ifconfig only shows lo no eth0 and there is no routing table shown with the route command.
I tried to configure the network using: ifconfig eth0 192.168.1.2 and it says eth0: unknown interface: no such device.
Please help how do I bring the network up when using the live CD, OR how do I install libxml2 from the available package since i'm now able to get into the crashed vm.

when you attempt to go into linux rescue

you will be asked regarding the network configuration

Well, I think I have been booting in single-user mode because I appended "single" at end of live cd boot option, but just before the prompt [root@localhost~#], there was a statement saying Welcome to rescue mode... and I hoped maybe I was in a rescue mode. So to arrive to that prompt there was no where I was asked anything about network configuration.

I have not worked on fedora but in redhat 5.2 it asks like the image shown
I am sure in Fedora as well it should ask regarding network configuration

Since I have been booting from the Live CD, I think I will try the installer DVD to see if I get any luck.
http://www.fedoraforum.org/forum/sho...d.php?t=254526