Re: Boot fails at: starting FAM ... ...

[jereme <jereme@rmcnet.cc>]

Dan Hunt <dan.hunt@st.brieux.com> writes:

> I can't restart my Woody with a custom 2.4.18 without it hanging at
> this point.

[...]

> The systen hang's at this point.

[...]

> How do I mount and edit the startup sequence to avoid this? 

You can either boot the system into single user mode or boot from
alternate media.

To boot into single user mode, (assuming lilo, others can help with
grub or whatever).  Pass the argument "single" to lilo at the "lilo:"
boot prompt.  Press SHIFT if you aren't setup for a boot prompt.

When the system boots into single user mode, you will not be loading
these services as they are likely only started in the multi-user run
levels.

Once the system is up, you can remove the symlinks in /etc/rc?.d as
approriate, (or remove the uneaded packages, etc).  Debian uses a
system V style initialization process.  This part of the policy manual
explains it quite well:

http://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-opersys.html#s-sysvinit

...but to answer your direct question, to mount those partitions when
booting from alternate media; figure out which partition you need by
using fdisk to look at the partition table of the harddisks, (if you
don't remember which partition is where).

fdisk -l /dev/hda

will look at the primary master IDE disk

then mount the partition with something akin to:

mount -t ext2 /dev/hda1 /mnt

Then you can go noodle the /etc/rc?.d symlinks as before, they will be
in /mnt/etc/rc?.d or wherevr you mounted the partition.

hth,

-- 
+--------------------------------------------------------------+
Jereme Corrado <jereme@restorative-management.com>
System Administrator
Restorative Management Corp.

gpg: 1024D/9C39E1F0