---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Marko Vojinovic vvmarko@gmail.com To: users@lists.fedoraproject.org Date: Sat, 17 Jul 2010 21:43:53 +0100 Subject: Re: Can one now help? On Saturday, July 17, 2010 21:18:47 Parshwa Murdia wrote:
I have stuck in an awesome problem. Having fedora dual booted with
windows,
i edited the /etc/fstab and /etc/sysctl.conf files, but now my PC is not booting in fedora, it is only booting in windows, though it is showing
the
option to boot from fedora, but after selecting too, it seems as if it is booting from that but after some time, again it ends to the symbol of fedora which appears just before the user login page. While it boots from fedora, if i press, alt+tab buttons, it shows in a black screen that it cann't write pid, and some other comments like line 12 / 14 / 16 is bad
of
fstab. so what i do in this scenario?
Boot from the rescue/install CD/DVD, mount the root partition and revert to the old fstab file from the backup.
Please let me know how can i mount the root partition? I have booted from the fedora core 11 cd and the icon 'Install to Hard Drive' is there now on my desktop, but i have not clicked the same, for mounting and recovering back the old one, please let me know.
Learn to use rescue mode on the install CD/DVD, or use a Live CD or similar
to access the fstab file, and fix it or revert to the backup you made.
Using the live CD, how can i use rescue mode? and access the old fstab file? after booting from the live cd, its showing the new fstab file.
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: JD jd1008@gmail.com To: Community support for Fedora users users@lists.fedoraproject.org Date: Sat, 17 Jul 2010 14:31:48 -0700 Subject: Re: Can one now help? On 07/17/2010 01:18 PM, Parshwa Murdia wrote:
Use the install CD/DVD and select rescue mode. The rescue mode will try to moun the fedora partition and will as for permission to do so. Answer in the positive. Then, chroot /mnt/sysimage and fix your fstab.
Can you please explicitly let me know what and how to do? means what i did is just booted from the live cd, and now the icon of installing it again to the hard drive is coming which i am not at all touching. but the thing is that, how in terminal i type and what i type? to mount or backing up the old one??
You might want to copy your fstab to a usb stick (in case you are still
unable to boot into fedora), and use your windows to follow this thread and post to it your fstab so we can see what wlese might be wrong.
same thing again, using the live CD, how can i use rescue mode? and access the old fstab file? after booting from the live cd, its showing the new fstab file.
On 07/18/2010 07:39 AM, Parshwa Murdia wrote:
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Marko Vojinovic <vvmarko@gmail.com <mailto:vvmarko@gmail.com>> To: users@lists.fedoraproject.org <mailto:users@lists.fedoraproject.org> Date: Sat, 17 Jul 2010 21:43:53 +0100 Subject: Re: Can one now help? On Saturday, July 17, 2010 21:18:47 Parshwa Murdia wrote: > I have stuck in an awesome problem. Having fedora dual booted with windows, > i edited the /etc/fstab and /etc/sysctl.conf files, but now my PC is not > booting in fedora, it is only booting in windows, though it is showing the > option to boot from fedora, but after selecting too, it seems as if it is > booting from that but after some time, again it ends to the symbol of > fedora which appears just before the user login page. While it boots from > fedora, if i press, alt+tab buttons, it shows in a black screen that it > cann't write pid, and some other comments like line 12 / 14 / 16 is bad of > fstab. so what i do in this scenario? Boot from the rescue/install CD/DVD, mount the root partition and revert to the old fstab file from the backup.
Please let me know how can i mount the root partition? I have booted from the fedora core 11 cd and the icon 'Install to Hard Drive' is there now on my desktop, but i have not clicked the same, for mounting and recovering back the old one, please let me know.
Learn to use rescue mode on the install CD/DVD, or use a Live CD or similar to access the fstab file, and fix it or revert to the backup you made.
Using the live CD, how can i use rescue mode? and access the old fstab file? after booting from the live cd, its showing the new fstab file.
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: JD <jd1008@gmail.com <mailto:jd1008@gmail.com>> To: Community support for Fedora users <users@lists.fedoraproject.org <mailto:users@lists.fedoraproject.org>> Date: Sat, 17 Jul 2010 14:31:48 -0700 Subject: Re: Can one now help? On 07/17/2010 01:18 PM, Parshwa Murdia wrote: Use the install CD/DVD and select rescue mode. The rescue mode will try to moun the fedora partition and will as for permission to do so. Answer in the positive. Then, chroot /mnt/sysimage and fix your fstab.
Can you please explicitly let me know what and how to do? means what i did is just booted from the live cd, and now the icon of installing it again to the hard drive is coming which i am not at all touching. but the thing is that, how in terminal i type and what i type? to mount or backing up the old one??
You might want to copy your fstab to a usb stick (in case you are still unable to boot into fedora), and use your windows to follow this thread and post to it your fstab so we can see what wlese might be wrong.
same thing again, using the live CD, how can i use rescue mode? and access the old fstab file? after booting from the live cd, its showing the new fstab file.
Live CD also allows you to just boot the cd without installing it. So, do not select install. just boot it and the desktop will come up. in desktop, open a terminal: Click Applications -> System Tools -> Terminal
in the shell terminal, mount your fedora partition: su - No password needed. just press enter. mkdir /mydisk mount /dev/sdXN /mydisk
where X is the drive letter and N is the partition number (starts at 1) where you installed fedora.
Now cd to your /etc and edit fstab and fix the problem.
If you do not know how to do that, post the contents of your fstab to this list and I am certain someone will tell you what is wrong.
On Sunday, July 18, 2010 15:39:43 Parshwa Murdia wrote:
Boot from the rescue/install CD/DVD, mount the root partition and revert to the old fstab file from the backup.
Please let me know how can i mount the root partition? I have booted from the fedora core 11 cd and the icon 'Install to Hard Drive' is there now on my desktop, but i have not clicked the same, for mounting and recovering back the old one, please let me know.
[snip]
Can you please explicitly let me know what and how to do? means what i did is just booted from the live cd, and now the icon of installing it again to the hard drive is coming which i am not at all touching. but the thing is that, how in terminal i type and what i type? to mount or backing up the old one??
You are right not to touch the install icon again. You do not want to install the system all over again. Instead, once you have booted the Live CD and have the desktop show up, you should do several things.
First open the terminal (find it in the menus, its exact position depends on KDE/Gnome Live CD, and I don't know which one you are using).
Then you need to find out which partition is the root partition of your installed Fedora. You do not want to confuse that to your *current* root partition which is on the Live CD. Hard disk partitions in Fedora are named sda1, sda2, ... for the master hd on the primary IDE controller, sdb1, sdb2, ... for the slave hd on the primary IDE, then sdc1/2/... and sdd1/2/... for the master and slave on the secondary IDE, etc. Of course, if you have a SATA drive this may be different. If you have a dual-boot configuration (ie. Windows), then it typically takes sda1 for Windows drive C:, sda2 for windows drive D: (if you have one, not counting the CD/DVD drive) and so on, while Fedora partitions go after those.
I am writing all this to show you that partition layout depends a lot on your hardware and software configuration, and no one on this list can guess it for you --- you have to find it out yourself for your particular machine. One way to do it is to use fstab:
(1) once in the terminal, type "su -" to become root (without quotes) (2) type "fdisk -l /dev/sda" (3) fdisk will list the partition table of your hard disk --- look carefully on that list, and try to figure out which partition is the Linux root partition. If you cannot guess it yourself, post the partition table layout to us so we can help you with guessing.
After you have determined which partition is the Fedora root (in what follows I will assume that it is /dev/sda2, while you should substitute the relevant /dev/sd?? instead), you want to mount it somewhere --- typically to /mnt directory of your running LiveCD Fedora. This is done as follows:
(1) create a new directory in /mnt, by typing "mkdir /mnt/oldfedora" (2) mount the partition to that directory by typing "mount /dev/sda2 /mnt/oldfedora" (and don't forget to substitute /dev/sda2 with whatever is relevant for your case) (3) change to the mounted directory, "cd /mnt/oldfedora" (4) list what is inside to make sure you've got it right so far, "ls -l"
If everything is ok, you should see a list of directories appear --- bin, boot, dev, etc, home, ... You are interested in the etc directory, and the fstab file is inside.
(5) Now open the fstab file in the text editor, "gedit /mnt/oldfedora/etc/fstab" (6) a window should open with the contents of the fstab file. (7) delete all changes you have made to the file before --- remove all additional options after "defaults" in all lines where you have added them (8) save the file and close the editor (9) get out of the /mnt/oldfedora directory, "cd .." (10) unmount the partition from that directory, "umount /mnt/oldfedora" (note, I didn't make a typo with the name of the command, it is really called "umount" rather than "unmount") (11) close the terminal, reboot the computer and boot Fedora from the hard disk.
If everything goes right, your Fedora system should come up fine. If you get stuck somewhere in this procedure, let us know where and what went wrong.
HTH, :-) Marko
P.S. All this may look very complicated, but if you want to learn how to use Linux, it is a worthy experience. ;-)