Kubuntu Edgy won't boot after editing fstab

[starfish]

Managed to get a decent install of Edgy done about 2 days ago. Did some Googling and customised the Desktop, after much frustration, but eventually had it just great!

I then wanted to add a second hard drive to use as /home and followed the procedure I found online (http://wiki.linuxquestions.org/wiki/...her_Hard_Drive). Unfortunately, being a newbie, I misread a line in editing the fstab and seem to have screwed things up to the point where my system won't boot up again. I believe the fstab has an invalid entry and I need help on how to recover from this. Can anyone help me please?

[paddlaren]

Re: Kubuntu Edgy won't boot after editing fstab

On the installation CD there is an option to boot in Rescue mode. I don't remember in detail how to do everything but I think you can either chose to boot and the enter the environment on a specific partion or it will ask if you whant to enter a chrooted environment.

Entering an environment like this i comonly known as chroot, you start a shell with another root-point than / This is very handy in this sittuation but requires that you have the system booted.

You can also try to boot in safety-mode or try to find out how to boot in single-user mode (don't know how to do this in Linux, only Solaris). Single-user-mode will boot you so that only the root-partion will be mounted thus allow you to edit the fstab using vi. This requires you to know the root password.

[penguin.ch]

Re: Kubuntu Edgy won't boot after editing fstab

I believe the fstab has an invalid entry and I need help on how to recover from this.

You may try to do it my way 8)

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Postscript: reference updated

[paddlaren]

Re: Kubuntu Edgy won't boot after editing fstab

You may try to do it my way 8)

There are always many ways. I would not download the xubuntu-dist to do this. Start hte one you must already have desktop-mode and mount the disk as penguin mention. Then you can edit the fstab. If there are other troubles to solve you can also enter a chrooted environment in that location:

$sudo chroot /mnt/hda2

This way you will enter the new environment as root and it is possible to run apt-get to install things etc. This can be done from the rescue-mode in the install-CD as well, just follow the instruction and chose to enter /dev/hda2 (or whatever) ans you are there.

Maby not needed to mention, anyway when you enter the environment as root you can follow instructions as usual though skip the sudo part of the command.

[starfish]

Re: Kubuntu Edgy won't boot after editing fstab

Hi paddlaren, thanks heaps! I managed to get the system to boot to the GUI login screen again. However, I have found a new problem - it keeps looping on itself.

I found the post http://kubuntuforums.net/forums/index.php?topic=12211.0 - I was getting the same error when I tried to start X. Don't get the error anymore but still the screen loops on login. I can login successfully if I select Console Login from the options menu.

I'll keep trying, although my partner has threatened to through the machine out the window :-)

[Gezzer]

Re: Kubuntu Edgy won't boot after editing fstab

go back into recovery mode when at the prompt enter your password
then write
dpkg-reconfigure -phigh xserver-xorg

when completed restart your system ...

[starfish]

Re: Kubuntu Edgy won't boot after editing fstab

Hi Gezzer, thanks for your post! I tried the command but still get the GUI looping.

Inspection of the kdm.log now, I found the following line:

error opening security policy file /usr/lib/xserver/SecurityPolicy

What would this indicate?

Just for info, my disk and fstab config are as below - anyone got ideas on where I've possibly made a mistake in recreating the fstab? I have no idea what a default fstab with a single hd should look like.

fdisk –l

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 * 1 31 248976 83 Linux
/dev/hda2 32 1027 8000370 5 Extended
/dev/hda5 32 77 369463+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/hda6 78 1027 7630843+ 8e Linux LVM

/dev/dhb4 1 13328 6297448+ 83 Linux


cat fstab

<file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
/dev/hda1 / ext3 defaults,errors=remount-ro 0 1
/dev/hda2 ext3 defaults 0 0
/dev/hda5 swap sw 0 0
/dev/hda6 /home auto defaults 0 0
/dev/hdc /media/cdrom0 auto user,noauto 0 0
#/dev/hdb4 /home auto defaults 0 1

[penguin.ch]

Re: Kubuntu Edgy won't boot after editing fstab

Just for info, my disk and fstab config are as below - anyone got ideas on where I've possibly made a mistake in recreating the fstab? I have no idea what a default fstab with a single hd should look like.

From the file system table, the reference to /dev/hda2 has to be removed completely - an extended partition does not contain any file system (nor is it a real parition - you may thing of it as a container of sorts for "real" partitions and their file systems). In addition, I would recommend to remove the option defaults,errors=remount-ro (inl. comma), for at least from all I know this is much more a bug than a feature ... (further ranting, er, reasoning).

Birdy aka littleDrHouse

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Postscript: reference updated

[starfish]

Re: Kubuntu Edgy won't boot after editing fstab

Thanks for your post Penguin.ch - made the changes suggested, still GUI loops back

I still get the 'error opening security policy file /usr/lib/xserver/SecurityPolicy' message in kdm.log and Xorg.0.log. Could this part of the problem why I can't login through the GUI?

[penguin.ch]

Re: Kubuntu Edgy won't boot after editing fstab

I still get the 'error opening security policy file /usr/lib/xserver/SecurityPolicy' message

In this case, I would suspect your X server's configuration (i.e. /etc/X11/xorg.conf) of being incorrect. You may feed the error message to http://www.google.com/linux for further reasoning as well as - hopefully working - solutions (for I have to leave now - my horses are waiting ...).

Birdy

[starfish]

Re: Kubuntu Edgy won't boot after editing fstab

All sorted by the looks of it. I found this case (http://www.ubuntuforums.org/archive/.../t-254358.html) and checked my system - I had run out of space on hda1. Turned out to be the fstab file which blew out when it got corrupted and was almost 5GB.

I then used sudo dpkg-reconfigure x11-common to reset the permissions for Anybody to start x. Now back at my customised desktop :-)

Thanks for the help guys!!!

Cheers

J

[penguin.ch]

Re: Kubuntu Edgy won't boot after editing fstab

I had run out of space on hda1

Since you are far from being the first one falling into this trap, you may be interested in a little script I have hacked down in an attempt to help avoiding further crashes - please refer to this page for code and details.

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Postscript: reference updated