Re: I screwed up and cannot boot
On Sat, Mar 11, 2000 at 03:45:25AM -0600, David J. Kanter wrote:
> At 07:10 PM 3/11/00 +0000, Paul J. Keenan wrote:
> > > Reinstall time? I have /home on a separate partition.
> >
> >Maybe not. I ran into a similar situation (bad superblock errors)
> >and found that it was because my original rescue disk set couldn't
> >mount the partitions.
> >
> >It was solved when I downloaded and created a brand new rescue.bin
> >and root.bin from frozen and they were able to mount the partitions
> >no problem.
> >
> >I booted up, mounted, chroot to run my old binaries, fixed my lilo.conf,
> >re-ran it et voila.
> >
> >--
> >Regards,
> >Paul
>
> Well, I'm getting there. Yes, the new rescue and boot disks helped. I was
> able to mount the partitions, run fsck on them (not while mounted, mind
> you), and edit /etc/fstab and /etc/lilo.conf. Still there are problems.
Good call. fsck on a mounted partition can be ungood. Sometimes
plusungood, or even doubleplusungood.
> Lilo refuses to recognize that I've got any kernels; perhaps they are dead.
> When I run lilo -D Testing (Testing is the label for my newest kernel) I
> get that it's not recognized.
Kernels don't die, they just refuse to pop....
If you can get apt running, try to install a basic kernal package off of
your Debian install disk (you do have one, right?).
> The only way I can get a reasonably functioning machine is if I use the new
> rescue disk, and at the boot prompt type Linux single root=/dev/hda6. An
> error comes up that I must type in the root password for maintenance, or
> Control-D to go on.
This is standard for "single" mode boot.
> If I type in the password, I've got access to my files
> (I've pulled off my home directory), but I cannot startx.
Whoa, Nellie! One thing at a time. Let's get your system up and
running before we worry about X windows.
Rather than starting X, you might try doing something useful like
building yourself a working kernel -- install the kernel package from
your installation media, do :
make mrproper
make xmenuconfig # Configures kernel
make-kpkg --bzimage --revision=Custom_1.0 binary
and install the resulting debs (man make-kpkg for more info).
> If I type
> Control-D, I end in a perpetual loop of cannot find module net-pf-1, at
> which point I must reboot.
Compiling and installing a kernel, with appropriate device support, will
solve this issue.
> My latest kernel, which I've got on disk, doesn't work. I get kernel panic
> messages that there is no initd.
>
> Any ideas still? Potato will be out on CD soon so I could reinstall then. I
> do have my /home. But I feel like I'm almost there.
You're close. Try a kernel build. Let us know what happens.
--
Karsten M. Self (kmself@ix.netcom.com)
What part of "Gestalt" don't you understand?
Scope out Scoop: http://scoop.kuro5hin.org/
Nothin' rusty about Kuro5hin: http://www.kuro5hin.org/
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