boot failure was Re: PLUG-discuss digest, Vol 1 #1482 -

[David A. Sinck]

\_ SMTP quoth Mike & Barb Kollier on 9/27/2001 19:40 as having spake thusly:
\_
\_ Please help!  I have an urgent situation. I'm running RedHat 7.1 on i686.  I just attempted to create quotas for my root filesystem.  I
\_ followed directions by setting the option field in the /etc/fstab file to defaults,usrquota,grpquota for the root filesystem line.  I
\_ may have made a typo.  On rebooting I got the following error:
\_ Remounting root filesystem in read/write mode: / not mounted already, or bad option.
\_ 
\_ The boot then quickly fails as the root system is left in read only mode.  I have a boot diskette and can get to the boot prompt but
\_ don't know what to do to resolve the issue.  My syslinux.cfg on the boot diskette is as follows:
\_ default linux
\_ prompt 1
\_ display boot.msg
\_ timeout 100
\_ label linux
\_     kernel vmlinuz
\_     append initrd=initrd.img root=/dev/hda5
\_ 
\_ I'd guess that I need to override the /etc/fstab or somehow modify it.  If I could only bring the system up in read only I could copy
\_ some of my unsaved work and re-install.  Any help greatly appreciated if only to point to another forum.

1) if your boot disk works and gets you to a 'recovery prompt', try
   mounting your root file system and checking the /etc/fstab to be
   something 'reasonable'.  My RH7.1 has a / line that looks like

LABEL=/                 /                       ext2    defaults        1 1

if labels didn't get written to your disk somehow, it may need to
resemble:

/dev/hda1               /                       ext2    defaults        1 1

2) No rescue disk?  Try an install.  No, really.  Just stop before the
   interestesting package selection part somehow.  Preferablly just
   after 'loading second stage' message, which or may not flash by on
   a cd boot.  Ctrl-Alt-F2 to get to the second virtual terminal.
   Type mount.  It *should* have mounted your various partitions
   someplace.  If it hasn't, go step through a few steps in the first
   terminal (Ctrl-Alt-F1) and check back.  When you've got them
   mounted, go edit fstab as above.  (Probably /mnt/etc/fstab, but
   ymmv).   Then cd back to / pop to first terminal and feed it
   ctrl-alt-delete.  Should reboto and all is well.

   Hum, you may need to say

% PATH=$PATH:/mnt/bin:/mnt/usr/bin

   to be able to find vi or other suitable editor (not pico, last I
   checked...it did weird things by wrapping config files)


David