Today, I screwed up one of my Linux machines (a test one). I was able to get out of it without doing a restore.
But now, it gets me wondering what are the ways the experts get out of this situation: Problem: I was adding a volume. I was basically following the directions that were on the Turbolinux website. (I have Suse and could have/should have used Yast.) Well, I messed up the /etc/fstab and of course, I didn't keep a copy of the origional. When I booted Linux, a lot of things didn't come up. It seemed like most startup scripts failed. More importantly, IP didn't come up. So, here I was stuck with the 3215 console interface (line mode, no full screen). Pico and Joe weren't found. VI was found. But VI is full screen. (I got around this as I brought up VI on fstab on another image and experimented to see how to delete the 3rd line. 3d. So where I couldn't tell what I was doing, VI accepted the 3d command and I could resave the file. Problem solved. This time.) So.... 1. How to you edit a file with a line mode terminal? Is it available very early in the boot process? 2. Is there a way of mounting Linux4 150 to another Linux image and fix the files from another system? 3. Is there a better way of fixing this problem. That is without restoring the entire Linux image, or clubbing myself in the head so I don't cause the problem in the first place? Tom Duerbusch THD Consulting (I don't care what you do during test time, as long as you can get out of it.)
