Re: [LUG] Linux partitions

[Neil Williams <linux@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Wednesday 17 October 2001  1:15 am, kam@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote about Re: 
[LUG] Linux partitions:
> Could easily have been me, merrily sawing off the branch I'm sitting on, as
> it were, and it's so obvious after the event ...
> Surely there's one HOW-TO still to be written ... 100 Easy Ways To Trash
> Your System Without Really Trying!

:-))

> When I moved part of my file system I initially left everything in place
> and just renamed the directory before making a stub directory with the
> old name to mount the new disk on. That way if I'd broken the system
> I could have put things back by booting from a rescue floppy and renaming
> a couple of directories and commenting out a line in /etc/fstab.
> As it happened it all worked fine, but I still kept my fingers crossed
> for a week or so before I began to remove the original files from the
> old disk.
>
> Keith

Now, before you get all smug or confident Keith, let me tell you a little 
tale about this most recent trashing of the server:

I DID have a rescue floppy

I DID try it. (It didn't work.)

I had kept the files intact and, like you, it was a simple case of using a 
few judicious mv commands - or so I thought.

(I've been here before with another OS!)

The problem was that the system simply wouldn't boot. Yes, I know it 'should' 
boot from the rescue, but what it actually did was:
1. Died with a kernel panic / segmentation fault
2. Later it booted from floppy but then tried to load linux from the hda 
anyway and fell over when it couldn't find /etc/inittab
3. This is a system that (for some reason) will NOT boot from a CD - it has 
to have a floppy to boot.
4. The only floppy suitable for a re-install was for Mandrake 7.0 (how DO you 
make these install-boot floppies? They're not the same as rescue floppies.)
(BTW. How do you boot from a network too? The BIOS has the option but I 
haven't a clue how to setup the network to respond, I mean, at that stage, 
the computer you are trying to boot doesn't even KNOW there's a network card 
does it? Let alone hostname, IP, etc.)
5. Goes without saying, no telnet access etc.
6. When I did get a CD-install to start, it DIED! (Some kind of error probing 
the ide-cd)

How did I get it working?

I took the SCSI card and CD-R drive out, took out the sound card and booted 
from the rescue floppy. Then I had to remount the filesystem as read-write 
(no point trying to use mv otherwise!) mount the hda1 drive, edit fstab, 
delete the symlink /etc/, move /home/etc/ back to /etc/ and hope that it 
would reboot.

(Luckily I have a newer - more reliable - CD-RW on another machine on the LAN 
and this broken machine now being the server, it didn't need a sound card.)

Just goes to show, these kind of problems never come alone. You make one 
stupid mistake and problems that hadn't even appeared before suddenly crash 
onto you like buses. All at once.

There were 3 hidden conflicts within this system - totally transparent in the 
working system, completely crippled it once it was tinkered with.
BEWARE!

-- 

Neil Williams
#-#-#-#-#-#-#-#-#
linux@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
neil@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
neil@xxxxxxxxxxxx
www.codehelp.co.uk


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