WARNING: /etc/fstab not working

NTay5 · 04-07-2005, 02:50 PM

I am running Fedora Core ver. 2.2.3 I load up and it says:

Code:

Welcome to Fedora Core 
Press 'I' to enter interactive startup.

Then, a flickering screen loads up (Due to color depth issues, I need that fixed too...) and after showing (somewhat) of the main screen it shuts down and it says:

Code:

System appears to have shutdown uncleanly
Press 'Y' within 3(2(1)) seconds to force a file system integrity check...

So then I press y and it says...

Code:

Checking root filesystem...
WARNING:  bad format on line 1 of /etc/fstab
WARNING:  Your /etc/fstab does not contain the fsck passno field. I will kludge around things for you, but you should try to fix your /etc/fstab file as soon as possible. 

fsck.ext2/:
The superblock can not be read or does not describe a correct ext2 filesystem

: is a directory while trying to open /
                                                                              [FAILED]
***An error occured during the file system check
***Dropping you to a shell; the system will now reboot
***When you leave the shell
Enter root password for maintenance
(or type Control-D to continue):

Can someone please tell me what I have to do?
I have no idea how to edit anything, so you're gonna have to be patient with me

Thanks!
-NT

mjrich · 04-07-2005, 02:54 PM

What does your /etc/fstab file look like ? Best paste it here.

Cheers,

mj

NTay5 · 04-07-2005, 03:02 PM

How do I look at it?

Plus, it's on another computer, although I don't mind hand-copying it...

mjrich · 04-07-2005, 03:10 PM

The easiest way would be to put in a copy of Knoppix (or Gnoppix, Slax, or any live distribution) and then copy the file to a USB memory stick.

Otherwise, when you reach the bit about "Dropping into a shell, enter the root password for maintenance" on booting, do just that - enter the root password. Now type

Code:

less /etc/fstab                  # press q when finished.

               - or, if that fails, then try:

mkdir /mnt/hda1
mount /dev/hda1 /mnt/hda1
less /mnt/hda1/etc/fstab                  # q to exit, once again.

Cheers,

mj

NTay5 · 04-07-2005, 03:14 PM

I tried this:

Code:

less /etc/fstab

And that just showed a bunch of messed up characters.

I tried this:

Code:

mkdir /mnt/hda1

And it says:

Code:

mkdir: cannot make new directory mnt/hda1: no such file or directory

mjrich · 04-07-2005, 03:21 PM

What were the messed up characters ? It could have just been a formatting issue.

What is the history of the system - has it ever run correctly, or did you just install something that happened to break it ?

Cheers,

mj

NTay5 · 04-07-2005, 03:25 PM

Well, more or less, I just installed it
I have been trying to fix this problem by myself for a couple of weeks, all that happened, was that I got to the messed up screen. And I just pressed the power button on my computer twice (to restart it) and it got all screwed up.

To give you a little info on my machine, I'm running a HP Pavilion (Slightly Custom, I took some stuff out and put new stuff in) with 64 MB of RAM. An Intel Celeron 500 Mhz processor.
I have no idea what kind of Graphics Card i have (Although I think I have an ATI Radeon or Geforce) and my monitor is older than the earth itself. I use a generic keyboard and mouse, and...I think that's it.

Hope that helps!

If you'd like to know what the characters look like, just ask.

Thanks!

-NT

mjrich · 04-07-2005, 03:33 PM

Yes, do post the characters of (at least the first line) of your /etc/fstab.

So you installed Fedora, but so far you haven't been able to boot into it ? And what is the output of (as root) fdisk -l /dev/hd*

Cheers,

mj

NTay5 · 04-07-2005, 03:52 PM

So many tough Questions

Okay, here we go!

Unforunately, due to some issues with fonts, I can't post the exact figures. There is a bunch of dashes on the top, a question mark, and a bunch of white boxes.

For the second thing you wanted, here you go:

Code:

Disk: /dev/hda: 2113 MB; 2113413120 bytes
64 heads, 63 sectors/tracks, 1023 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 4032 * 512 = 2064384

System       Boot   Start       End       Blocks         Id   System
/dev/hda1      *        1           51      102784+     83    Linux
/dev/hda2                52       939      1790208     83    Linux
/dev/hda3               940     1023      169344      82    Linux swap

Wow! That was a lot of copying...

Um, just to tell you, if I take a while, that's due to the fact I have to run about 20 feet to the other computer, copy the info and run back here.

Thank you very much!
-NT

EDIT: The reason everything looks screwed up, I don't know why, so if you need anything clarified, tell me.

mjrich · 04-07-2005, 04:12 PM

Well it sounds like, for whatever reason, your /etc/fstab file is buggered. It may be that /dev/hda1 is not even mounted - but in that case you should receive an error, not strange characters. To check: what is the output of mount and ls -lh /

Assuming that /etc/fstab is corrupted, you can either re-install Fedora from scratch, and see what happens; or create a new /etc/fstab along the lines of what follows:

Code:

# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# <file system> <mount point>   <type>  <options>                       <dump>  <pass>
proc            /proc           proc    defaults                        0       0
/dev/hda1       /               ext3    defaults,errors=remount-ro      0       1
/dev/hda2       /home           ext3    defaults,errors=remount-ro      0       0
/dev/hda3       none            swap    sw                              0       0
/dev/hdc        /cdrom          iso9660 ro,user,noauto                  0       0

This is only how I would guess that your /etc/fstab would look - it is possible that /dev/hda2 is mounted somewhere other than /home (possibly /users) - perhaps you can remember from the initial install. To create the new file, login as root, and then type

Code:

rm /etc/fstab
nano /etc/fstab

Fill in the above details, and then press CTRL-O to write the file, and then CTRL-X to exit. If all is well, then on rebooting you should be ok. If not, then it may be worth just re-installing - there shouldn't be too many problems with Fedora, normally.

Good luck

mj

NTay5 · 04-07-2005, 04:19 PM

Okay, I tried:

Code:

rm /etc/fstab

And it brought back the following:

Code:

rm: Remove regular file /etc/fstab, are you sure?:y
rm: Cannot remove /etc/fstab: read-only filesystem

And about the time you read this I'm working on the output of mount...

Thanks,
-NT

NTay5 · 04-07-2005, 04:27 PM

Mount:

Code:

/dev/hda2 on / type ext2 (rw)
none on /proc type proc (rw)
none on /dev pts type devpts (rw, gid=5, mode=620)
usbdvfs on /proc/bus/usb type usbdvfs (rw)
/dev/hda1 on /boot type ext2 (rw)
none on /dev/shm type tmpfs (rw)

There you are...

Do you really need the

Code:

li -ls /

function?

Thanks,
-NT

mjrich · 04-07-2005, 04:33 PM

Odd - mount seems to think that everything is mounted read/write. Just in case, run

Code:

mount -n -o remount,rw/

The only other option is that you're not logged in as root. Try rm -vf /etc/fstab. No, now that we know that the filesystem exists, don't worry about ls -lh /.

Cheers,

mj

mjrich · 04-07-2005, 04:45 PM

Looking at the output of mount, your /etc/fstab should be more like

Code:

# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# <file system> <mount point>   <type>  <options>                       <dump>  <pass>
proc            /proc           proc    defaults                        0       0
/dev/hda1       /boot           auto    defaults,errors=remount-ro      0       1
/dev/hda2       /               auto    defaults,errors=remount-ro      0       0
/dev/hda3       none            swap    sw                              0       0

EDIT: I'll be busy for the next few hours, so won't be able to help too much for a bit. Good luck with it all though, and if all else fails, you can always reinstall if you have no data on the system.

Cheers,

mj

NTay5 · 04-07-2005, 05:21 PM

Okay, I tried both...

It said that rw/ was not located in etc/fstab or etc/mtab

I tried:

Code:

rm -vf /etc/fstab

That didn't work either...

Am I like screwed, or what?

Thanks,
-NT