Re: Installation problem: unable to open an initial console
On Thu, 23 Oct 1997, LUK ShunTim wrote:
> My problem is like this:
> I recently upgraded from Debian 1.2 to 1.3 and it worked fine. Yesterday
> there was a power failure and I try to reboot using the Boot Disk
> created during the installation but the system just kept on rebooting
> itself. I then use the Rescue Disk and boot using the option
>
> rescue root=/dev/hda5
>
> (I had the / partition on an extended logical partition named hda5.)
> and the message "unable to open an initial console" appeared. I then
> tried the default boot option in the Rescus Disk and I was able to
> mount my previous partitions on the directory /target. However, I cannot
> do anything else. (I would like, at least, to save my data files!) There
> does not seem to be a hardware problem because I get the virtual
> consoles (1 to 4) from the Rescue Disk boot.
That sure sounds like a bad problem!
Besides doing fancy things to fix exactly what went broken ( I don't know
what and how ), you can try the following:
- Boot with the rescue diskette into the installation procedure,
- enable swap,
- mount your partitions,
- open a second vt with alt-f2,
- copy /target/etc to /target/home/etc
- maybe copy /boot and /vmlinuz ( if that isn't in boot already ) and
/lib/modules also to /home
- copy /var/lib/dpkg to home
- switch back to vt1
- reinstall base
- reboot
That should certainly fix the "couldn't open initial console" problem.
In your case I would also use `dpkg -i` to reinstall important packages
that did not already get reinstalled with base in the previous steps.
At some stages, you might want/have to copy some of the backed up files
back, either because you've tuned them different from the default
installation or because they contain important information about your
system for dpkg/dselect - the files in /var/lib/dpkg. You might want to
put those back after reboot before you do anything with dpkg/dselect.
Please tell us about your experiences and results.
Best of luck,
Joost
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