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Re: more install problems



On Monday 04 August 2003 20:39, Andrew McGuinness wrote:
> Richard Lyons wrote:
[...]
> > Perhaps I should reinitialize the root partition and re-install,
> > using the 2.4.18-686 kernel -- there is a way to select the
> > kernel during the install, isn't there?

Actually, it turns out there doesn't seem to be a way to do that.
>
> I wouldn't bother doing that. If you're in doubt, install the
> kernel-image-2.4.18-686 and kernel-pcmcia-modules-2.4.18-686
> packages over again with dpkg -i  That's all that the reinstall
> would do anyway.
>
> Do you have the "hotplug"

Yes.
>
> When you install the kernel-image-2.4.18-686 package, it would have
> asked you if you wanted to install a boot block for it with LILO
> (you do).  You would then need to reboot to run the new kernel.
>
I did that.

> If you are running the right kernel, "uname -r" should display
> 2.4.18-686 (not 2.4.18-bf2.4)

Yes, that was ok.
>
[...a lot of good advice snipped, because:...]

What I did last night, thinking to sidestep the problem:

I downloaded the knoppix 3.2 iso, burned and ran it.  Everything runs 
perfectly.  (and the only time I have ever seen Xwindows system 
exiting withot errors!)  I think it's unstable with 2.4.21-xfs 
kernel.  Then I found that the instructions for installing 
permanently from the Knoppix CD are cryptic.  There is no install 
script.  Following the instructions, I did cp -a to the appropriate 
partitions (after reinitialising them) and wrote /etc/lilo.conf and 
/etc/fstab - and ran lilo of course. 
 
This should have given me a working system.  There is always a 'but'.
The lilo menu pops up as expected, the kernel loads, and then some 
error messages flash by something about a fs not being read-only.  
That is odd, because my lilo.conf says:

lba32
boot=/dev/hda
install=/boot/boot-menu.b
backup=/dev/null
map=/boot/map
timeout=300
prompt
vga=normal
default=Knoppix

image=/vmlinuz
   root=/dev/hda3
   label=Knoppix
   read-only

/etc/fstab is this:

LABEL=/    /         ext2    defaults      1 1
proc       /proc     proc    defaults      0 0
pts        /dev/pts  devpts  mode=0622     0 0
dev/fd0    /floppy   auto    noauto,owner  0 0
/dev/hda1  swap      swap    defaults      0 0
/dev/hda2  /boot     ext2    defaults      0 2
/dev/hda5  /usr      ext2    defaults      0 2
/dev/hda6  /home     reiserfs  users,exec  0 2
/dev/cdrom /cdrom    auto    user,noauto,exec,ro  0 0

It's a collection of alterations to the fstab Knoppix starts up with 
off the cd.  So there may be errors.  I don't know what pts is, so I 
left it in.  I am wondering why some drives have defaults and /home 
has users,exec.  And whether users and user ar both acceptable.

The present situation is that, after the 'not read-only'  error, there 
are several other error messages about can't write because read-only.  
I assume this is because, as it appears not read only the boot script 
does not fsck and remount read-write.  A result appears to be empty 
/var/log/messages and dmesg.  So I don't really know what is going 
wrong.  It finishes by dumping me in a shell with nothing mounted.  I 
can then mount the other partitions, but the root partition is read 
only so I cannot edit /etc/fstab or lilo.conf.  

Can anyone see my mistakes?

TIA

-- 
richard



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