installation gone wrong?

[nilsA]

Hi,

some time ago I got two "new" SCSI disks, and installed Feisty Fawn. The installation went just fine, it seemed, but after a little time the problems came. In short, it proved to be termination problems + contact problem with one of the disks.

So, I waited for a better SCSI card, cables and terminator - and these problems are gone. By and large I'm very happy with it, but obviously something has gone wrong during installation.

To make a short start, I get various error messages when upgrading, when apt-get (install etc.)

The common factor seems to be

chown cannot access var/run/clamav

or

clamav-base

I have no clue as to what this is, what has gone wrong - or if it is fixable.

And - if this has anything to do with not being able to access CD's and USB memory sticks?

[dibl]

Re: installation gone wrong?

clamav is an anti-virus package. I'd recommend you remove the package, and see if the trouble goes away. I don't think it is related to CDs or memory sticks, unless clamav is trying to scan them or something like that.

[nilsA]

Re: installation gone wrong?

clamav is an anti-virus package. I'd recommend you remove the package, and see if the trouble goes away. I don't think it is related to CDs or memory sticks, unless clamav is trying to scan them or something like that.

You're right. I still get the error when trying to access Storage Media:

Unable to enter file:///media. You do not have access rights to this location.

Any idea what's gone wrong here?

[dibl]

Re: installation gone wrong?

Uh-boy ...

One of the toughest things about *nix to get a handle on, when coming from other OS's, is the "permissions" thing. At first you are oblivious and hit the brick wall, as a user, because you are limited in the operations that you have permission to do, then in the next phase you think the magic solution must be to just log in as root and do everything as the root user, and then when you've broken your system that way, you realize that there is a time and place to be a user and a time and place to be the Super User.

So, somehow you have managed to set your system up so that you (as a regular user) do not have permission to do file operations on your memory stick. I'm not the expert on an elegant fix -- but I'll tell you what I would do. Open your konsole window, and type "sudo konqueror". That will run konqueror in "Super User" mode. In that mode, you should be able to browse to your media stick, and right-click on the icon, and choose "properties", then "permissions", and change the permission so that nilsA can read & write on this media. To test your fix, get out of konqueror and try it again as a user.

HTH :P

[nilsA]

Re: installation gone wrong?

So, somehow you have managed to set your system up so that you (as a regular user) do not have permission to do file operations on your memory stick. I'm not the expert on an elegant fix -- but I'll tell you what I would do. Open your konsole window, and type "sudo konqueror". That will run konqueror in "Super User" mode. In that mode, you should be able to browse to your media stick, and right-click on the icon, and choose "properties", then "permissions", and change the permission so that nilsA can read & write on this media. To test your fix, get out of konqueror and try it again as a user.

HTH :P

Thank you; what had happened was a little different; I had made part of the disk I use for Win2000 into /media; thus confusing the entire system, I guess.

Now, I tried fix it using the graphical interface - and hell broke loose. It seems, if we try changing into some mount point that is already occupied, what happens is pretty random.

So - rather than having my CD back to /CD0, my spare disk to /sparedisk etc - the root partition ended up as /sparedisk.

Leaving me with a system that boots, but don't let me log in graphical. X starts, but either the user is changed whatever. I can, however, log on in line mode.

I have some idea regarding what to do - edit the fstab file, so that sda1 is set as / - or my sdb1 as /usr? Or does the system settings not change that? It seems strange that it is possible to boot and log in if so?

Here's what the Fstab looks like - I may do some typos -

#some header info

# /dev/sda1
UUID=aaa....b1e /  ext3  nouser, defaults, errors=remount $
# /dev/sdb1
UUID=73a...6a4  /home ext3 nouser, defaults, atime, auto$
# /dev/sda2
UUID=12d....399   none   swap  sw  0 0
/dev/scd0 /media/cdrom0 udf, iso9660 user, atime, noauto, rw, dw, exec, suid, 0 0
/dev/fd0 /media/floppy0 auto  user, atime, noauto, rw, dev, exec, suid, 0 0
/dev/sda5 /media/floppy0/Midlertidig\040disk  auto nouser, atime, noauto, rw, nodev, $
/dev/sda1 /media/Ekstradisk  auto nouser, atime, noauto, rw, nodev, noexwc, nosuid 0 0

#Generated by Automatix
##end of Automatis mounted partitions

/dev/hde1 /media/cdrom0 auto nouser, noauto, atime, rw, nodev, noexec, nosaid 0 0
/dev/hde1 /media/Ekstradisk auto nouser, noauto, atime, rw, nodev, noexec, nosaid 0 0
/dev/hdc/media/cdrom0 auto nouser, noauto, atime, rw, nodev, noexec, nosaid 0 0

My real disks are as follows:

two SCSI-disks (sda and sdb)
- sda two partitions, sda1 ext3 and sda2 swap
- sdb one partition, ext3
sda1 should be /
sdb1 should be /home

one fixed ide hard disks - two ntfs partitions
one removable ide hard disk
one ide CD burner drive
usb ports

one parallel port Iomega zip 100 may be attached at occasions, but not mounted.
one standard floppy disk drive

It's pretty clear to me that something is wrong in the Fstable - but I don't feel sure what to change and what to keep.

My guess is the two last lines before the end of Automatix made code - the /dev/sda5 and /dev/sda5 - lines?

But as I now am able to get in, I'm a little scared to do more harm, so please, can anyone help me?

[askrieger]

Re: installation gone wrong?

I agree that the /dev/sda5... and /dev/sda1... lines immediately above the Automatix comment are incorrect. The thing that I don't see is your windoze disk. (/dev/hda) ? I would have said that having /dev/sdb1 as /home is exactly what you want, but perhaps I don't understand what you're trying to do.

The other thing that I notice is that unless there was a transcription error when you copied your /etc/fstab file, some of your problems might be due to the fact that there are spaces in your fstab entries where there shouldn't be. e.g. it should say:

/dev/sda1<tab>/<tab>ext3<tab>defaults,errors=remount-ro<tab>0<tab>1

(where I have omitted the UUID stuff.) Also, you have no swap partition and no proc partition. Is that intentional? Or, did you just omit them from your post?

One way to find out where everything is would be to boot up in Knoppix and look at the /etc/fstab that Knoppix generates for your hardware. It should detect all your drives and all the partitions on them.

[nilsA]

Re: installation gone wrong?

Thank you! I removed the lines, and remounted the hda1 disk + changed the settings for the CD - and things seems ok.