Maybe there is a stale lock file?

[PJJ]

In the process of updating 9.10 this evening my computer got stuck on processing some triggers (for hal?). I'm not sure where exactly it froze.

I cannot boot into the system at all. Boot process stops with error 16 somewhere in the mount process.
"/ mount cannot make link to /etc/mtab. . ."

"Maybe there is a stale lock file?" is the final message. Then the system just hangs with a black screen.

I cannot boot into recovery mode either because the error occurs before I get to the command line.

Two simple questions:

1. How do I get to a command line when the system does not start at all?
2. Once I get in, where do I find the 'lock file' ?

I can get to the file system from my functioning 9.04 installation. Could/should I get rid of the mtab file?

Is there any way to correct the botched 9.10 update from 9.04?
Found none.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

[PJJ]

Re: Maybe there is a stale lock file? (SOLVED - Well, Sort of . . .)

While waiting for any takers I pursued several possible solutions to this problem.
One was to access files of my unbootable 9.10 installation from a working 9.04 system. I found 1 mtab file, empty and at least 8 or ten mtab~xxxx files. Also all empty.
Used the backup mtab to fill the empty file. On restart, the computer started, all systems working.
Used the command line to do 'sudo dpkg --configure -a'.
Huge number of files updated. Then regular update, safe-upgrade, dist-upgrade.

A cold boot the next morning produced another system freeze on a black screen. When starting in recovery mode, I got as far as the recovery menu. However, any attempt of selecting one of the options immediately produced dire error messages, scribbled on a blood red background, and a maintenance shell. Unresponsive. Useless.

Since I had moved any special files and configuration settings from the 9,10 partition to a spare partition I keep for such events, I decided to format the partition and do a clean install of 9.10 Beta.

It worked. Booting without problems. The OS is ok except that the recovery mode still crashed when I attempt to access one of the menu options.

The reinstall is not a real solution of the problem but rather a workaround. With a little more knowledge I should have been able to fix the problem with the mtab file. But then there were all the other 'stale lock files' . . .

The original 'stale lock file' error apparently was created when I accidentally interrupted some file and configuration work that was going on without the active drive indicator flickering. So, it was the usual operator error more than anything else.

Other problems with the Beta version are related to OO3.1 that eats pictures and file extensions. There is also no warning when saving a file would overwrite an existing file of the same name. That's how I lost about 25 pages of new text!