Re: fstab problem

[John Miller <jmiller@thecsl.org>]

Deephay wrote:
> Greetings all,
>
> I have a problem with my /etc/fstab and the system cannot boot.
> I copied a fstab file from another machine, but I fogot that the file
> system of the root volume on that machine is ext3 but the one I have
> is XFS, so the system cannot boot anymore.
> Luckily I have a LiveCD and I boot the LiveCD system and change the
> fstab:
>
> # <file system> <mount point>   <type>  <options>       <dump>  <pass>
> proc            /proc           proc    defaults        0       0
> /dev/hda3       /               xfs     defaults,errors=remount-ro
> 0       1
> /dev/hda8       /boot           ext3    defaults        0       0
> /dev/hda9       none            swap    sw              0       0
> /dev/hdc        /media/cdrom0   iso9660 ro,user,noauto  0       0
Are you sure that these are the correct partitions for the disk?  It
seems a bit odd that you don't have /dev/hda1 or /dev/hda2 being used
for something.  Did the live cd detect the above?

> but the system can only boot to runlevel 2, and the message said that
> the '/' is not mounted yet (wrong option).
> So, how can I write a correct fstab?

The system booted to runlevel 2 without a root filesystem?  How? 
Anyway, runlevel 2 is the Debian default, so _only_ booting to runlevel
2 isn't a bad thing unless you've specified otherwise....

Boot with your live cd, then run

# fdisk -l /dev/hda

This should tell you the exact partitions that are on your disk.  My
apologies if you've already done this.

If you have the partitions correct, are you passing the correct info to
your bootloader?  If it doesn't know where the root partition is, you'll
have difficulties.

--John