Mikkel L. Ellertson wrote:
Sorry - I have been on nights and too tired to do much more than think about the issues you both raise here. Have not yet attempted to do anything, other than the rescue the other day.SnapafunFrank wrote:
Thinking back on some other posts of hers, I think it should be /data instead of /mnt.Mikkel L. Ellertson wrote:
Rosemary McGillicuddy wrote:
This is strange. You are mounting hda6 on /mnt, and then the CD-ROM is mounting on /mnt/cdrom. It is not normal proactice to mount anyting on /mnt, as you normaly have mount points for removable devices in this directory. In your case, your CD-ROM is mounted there, as well as your Windows partition. I would have to look into things a lot deeper, to see exactly what order things would get mounted, but I can picture all kinds of strange things going on here. If the Windows partition gets mounted before hda6, then you are probably going to lose access to it. I am not sure what is going to happen with the CD-ROM, but I would not be susprised if it failed to mount if there is not a cdrom directory in the base directory on hda6.
Frank suggested I install explore2fs and post the fstab file.
Here it is
/dev/hda5 / ext3 defaults 1 1
/dev/hda9 /home ext3 defaults 1 2
/dev/hda6 /mnt ext3 defaults 1 2
/dev/hdc /mnt/cdrom auto umask=0,user,iocharset=iso8859-15,codepage=850,noauto,ro,exec,users 0 0
none /mnt/floppy supermount dev=/dev/fd0,fs=ext2:vfat,--,umask=0,iocharset=iso8859-15,sync,codepage=850 0 0
/dev/hda1 /mnt/windows ntfs umask=0,nls=iso8859-15,ro 0 0
none /proc proc defaults 0 0
/dev/hda7 swap swap defaults 0 0
/dev/hda8 swap swap defaults 0 0
Regards
Rosemary
What you may want to try is to boot the install CD in the rescue mode, drop to the console, and run:
mount /dev/hda5 /mnt cd /mnt/etc mv fstab fstab.save grep -v hda6 fstab.save >> fstab cd umount /mnt reboot
What you are doing is to mount your root partition, and change to what is normaly the /etc direcroty. You are then renaming fstab to fstab.save. The grep command is cheating a new fstab without the hda6 line in it.
If you are more comfortable using vi instead of messing around with grep, and renaming files, use this instead.
mount /dev/hda5 /mnt cd /mnt/etc cp fstab fstab.save vi fstab move down to line starting /dev/hda6 Enter "i#<Esc>" Enter ":wq" cd / umount /mnt eboot
For the vi commands, do not enter the ", and the <Esc> is the Esc key. Use the down arrow key to move down the hage. What you are doing is putting the "#" at the start of the line to comment it out. You do not realy need to make a backup copy of fstab, but I like to play it safe.
Now, I don't know if this will fix the problem you are having, and we will have to discover what is going on with hda6, and where it should be mounted. But it is one problem that I do see, so fixing it should not hurt. (If it is susposed to be mounted of /usr, then we have to get it mounted correctly before the will boot correctly!)
Mikkel
OK Mikkel, I did not see it that way and submit that you know more about this than I but I'm not clear about this and wonder if Rosemary will be able to follow the logic you mention.
First, I agree that hda6 as the /mnt directory is out of place, and wonder why the /mnt directory even has it's own partition. The directories inside my /mnt directory are afterall only to allow
linking to partitions and/or devices. Hence my windows partition would be something like " /dev/hdb1 /mnt/win " with " win " being the partition and not " mnt ".
I now see even more issues and can understand your concern so would ask how we could get the result printf from her windows side that would give us the same result we can get
when we issue:
# df
when within our running system. eg: mine looks like this ~
[EMAIL PROTECTED] mnt]# df Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on /dev/hda5 966M 711M 206M 78% / /dev/hda1 966M 14M 903M 2% /boot /dev/hda6 9.4G 5.1G 4.0G 57% /usr /dev/hda8 9.4G 8.7G 730M 93% /home /dev/hda9 1020M 303M 666M 32% /var /dev/hda3 12G 1.3G 9.5G 13% /mnt/empty /dev/hda4 3.4G 2.7G 713M 80% /mnt/win_h /dev/hdb2 16M 2.3M 13M 16% /mnt/hdb2_boot /dev/hdb5 92M 55M 33M 63% /mnt/hdb5_root /dev/hdb6 92M 62M 25M 72% /mnt/hdb6_var /dev/hdb7 3.1G 1.9G 1.1G 64% /mnt/hdb7_usr /dev/hdb9 1.5G 1.4G 151M 91% /mnt/hdb9_home /dev/hdb1 14G 13G 1.2G 92% /mnt/win_c2
From this printf we would be able to determine the correct layout for /etc/fstab for her hard drive, and I agree, before she gets to cdrom, floppies, etc.
[ An alternative is to get her up with the rescue option as you described above and take her step by step through
the commands she needs to get us the relevant info. ~ your thoughts ? ]
But I reiterate ~ /mnt should not be a partition on it's own ????? Your thoughts here also please.
I am not sure how to explain about what would be going on here - it is not a newbie topic, as the logic is a bit hard to follow. The things is, you can use ANY directory as a mount point for another file system. If there is something in the directory before you mount the new partition, it is no longer accessable after you run mount. The new file system "hides" what was there before.
So when hd6 gets mounted on /mnt, the /mnt/cdrom and /mnt/windows directories will no longer be accessable. If hda1 is mounted on /mnt/windows before hand, you will not be able to get at it. If you try to mount it after hda6, then the mount will fail unless there is a windows directory in what is now /mnt.
If directions are needed on how to boot in the rescue mode, and get to the console, let me know. (There are directions on the TWiki page.)
Mikkel
I'm wondering if some of the following information might clarify what has happened. I have some notes made from the installation, and from attempts to install USB mouse, and the outcomes. Ususally when I follow advice from the list I print the email and make notes on that, but had a problem with printing emails when fiddling with the mouse so few notes unfortunately, as I think it is likely to be a factor.
During installation the partitioning wizard sugested the following mount points which I chose, as I had been advised to go with the selection the Drake made:
- hda 5 (5.8Gb, /, ext3)
- hda 6 (368Mb, /mnt, ext3) /mnt
- hda 9 (11Gb, /home, ext 3) /home
At the end of the install chose Lilo bootloader and it gave me this - /dev/hda, and the "entries",
linux (/boot/vm linux)*
linux-nonfb (/boot/vm linux)
failsafe (/boot/vm linux)
windows (/dev/hda1)
Some of my syntax may be a bit out, as these are handwritten scribbles - sorry.
At my first couple of boots it hung, one reason was "checking for new hardware". At suggestion of list, unplugged USB scanner and mouse and it booted okay. Used mouse with PS2 adapter.
Attempted to get USB mouse going with this suggestion from list - it is possible I copied instructions wrongly and made an error. "Reboot with CD1 in and mouse not connected, choose install, upgrade." I did that, and went to the mouse config section and attempted to set it up, chose a couple of different mice, and tried different USB ports. Had no luck, unfortunately my notes are sketchy! The computer stalled, and I had to do a brutal shutdown. I'm reasonably sure that when I rebooted I had some problems which I haven't recorded, but got a very strange desktop, which appeared to have a changed resolution, with outsized icons, and when i moved the mouse the area under the cursor sort of disappeared, as though it were being erased. Rebooted again and had an additional entry in the Lilo choices, which consisted of numbers - four digits and a letter, and maybe hyphen and another letter. I booted to the linux choice and got the weird desktop above, so treid the number choice and got into linux desktop and everything worked fine. I'm guessing that whatever I did then may have caused the strange output you now see? Is it better for me to start again?
Thanks for your help
Rosemary
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