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[LUG] Editing fstab on an encrypted drive

 

I have a machine with two hard drives, one with an encrypted Fedora 9 installation, the other with a home partition from an old Xubuntu installation. On booting up recently, it couldn't or wouldn't see the second hard drive - there was an option in the menu for '158GB Volume' but right-clicking to mount it would not work. Fine, I thought, I'll add a line to the /etc/fstab file to mount it when it boots, reasoning I can always take it out if things go wrong.
Well, things *have* gone very wrong - on boot up it says it cannot mount the partition because it is busy (even after I've disconnected the drive...), then it drops to 'maintenance mode'. However, even though I am logged in as root, the file system is mounted read-only and I cannot edit the fstab (this is in 'maintenance mode' - how on earth are you supposed to maintain a read only system?). I've tried creating a copy (which it won't let me do), chmod-ing the file (again, it won't let me). Bootable CDs (Helix, Puppy) can only see the boot sector of the disk, presumably because the Fedora sector is encrypted.
So, how can I get in and remove the offending line? It's no biggy if I can't, I'll just install another OS on the drive (unencrypted this time!), but if there's a quick fix it's got to be better...
Jason
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