On Friday 15 October 2010 10:26 am, Connie Sieh wrote: > On Fri, 15 Oct 2010, Larry Linder wrote: > > A simple problem that I had done for years, turned out to be difficult > > due to a mistake I made and what I believe is an error in the Linux OS. > > How you set it up is to forget to remove the logical drive from > > "/etc/fstab" in the past it was never a problem. > > Can you explain what you mean by "logical drive". In "fstab" the device can be listed as /dev/sda1 - scsi disk part. 1 or it and be listed as "LABEL=/boot. Probably a misleading notation on my part. > > But in SL 5.5 it is a serious problem because during boot it can't find > > the drive name. It drops you to a maintenance level and all you used to > > do in put in the root pass word, edit the files etc. > > What happen now: > > put in your password > > "bash /usr/bin/id: no such file or dir" > > "bash [: =: unary operator expected" > > "bash /usr/bin/id:" > > "bash [: =: unary operator expected" > > "bash /usr/bin/kpg-config: no such file or dir" > > > >> repair file system1 > > > > As a result you can do nothing because your passwd has been rejected. > > > > You are back to using your install disks. It recognizes un initialized > > disks and initializes them - do a new install and set up disks and disk > > names and do not format anything, except new disk, setup root / passwd, > > set up internet, do not install any thing. and it knows there is an > > active OS present and the install aborts. > > You could have used "rescue" mode of the install cd's to fix your issue vs > doing a new install. I tried the rescue mode first but was not able to set up drives.
> > The system reboots and runs normally everthing is preserved all because > > some security nit modified the code and never checked the end result. > > What security code was changed? > > > Sometime you can be so secure that the system becomes worthless. > > > > What used to be a simple thing of replacing disks has now been difficult > > at best. > > What I fixed is to get rid of the logical names in in the fstab and went > > back to the /dev/sda1 etc. This was done because I didn't have a good > > way to look at disks and their names but knew the hardware. > > If you mean labels then you can find filesystems label info via e2label or > findfs . > > > For back up on paper you need to do "df" and pipe it to lpr, keep in you > > file folder as a true back up. > > > > You can easily create this problem by simply unplugging a disk and trying > > a reboot. > > Can you explain this in more detail. What you have to do to create the problem is to unplug a disk that is referenced in "fstab" and power on the system. I just repeated this same thing on Susi 9.2 and I got the same system problem. I gave it my root passwd and was able to edit /etc/fstab, comment out the removed drive and it booted perfectly. > > I have three backups but I never had a disk that was good but the > > electronics became intermittent as a function of temperature. suspect a > > bad solder joint or circuit trace crack somewhere. The symptom was a > > nice running drive that was sluggish. A reboot solved the problem but > > the failures began to increase. Users don't seem to understand a system > > being down. > > Some of these boxes are shut down ever six months for cleaning. > > > > Disks being cheep it time to install a new one and toss the old one. > > > > Larry Linder > > -Connie Sieh
