On Friday 15 October 2010 10:26 am, Connie Sieh wrote:
> On Fri, 15 Oct 2010, Larry Linder wrote:
> > A simple problem that I had done for years, turned  out to be difficult
> > due to a mistake I made and what I believe is an error in the Linux OS.
> > How you set it up is to forget to remove the logical drive from
> > "/etc/fstab" in the past it was never a problem.
>
> Can you explain what you mean by "logical drive".
In "fstab" the device can be listed as /dev/sda1  - scsi disk part. 1
or it and be listed as "LABEL=/boot.   Probably a misleading notation on my 
part.
> > But in SL 5.5 it is a serious problem because during boot it can't find
> > the drive name.  It drops you to a maintenance level and all you used to
> > do in put in the root pass word, edit the files etc.
> > What happen now:
> > put in your password
> > "bash  /usr/bin/id:   no such file or dir"
> > "bash  [: =: unary operator expected"
> > "bash  /usr/bin/id:"
> > "bash [: =: unary operator expected"
> > "bash /usr/bin/kpg-config: no such file or dir"
> >
> >> repair file system1
> >
> > As a result you can do nothing because your passwd has been rejected.
> >
> > You are back to using your install disks. It recognizes un initialized
> > disks and initializes them - do a new install and set up disks and disk
> > names and do not format anything, except new disk,  setup root / passwd,
> > set up internet, do not install any thing.   and it knows there is an
> > active OS present and the install aborts.
>
> You could have used "rescue" mode of the install cd's to fix your issue vs
> doing a new install.
I tried the rescue mode first but was not able to set up drives.

> > The system reboots and runs normally everthing is preserved all because
> > some security nit modified the code and never checked the end result.
>
> What security code was changed?
>
> > Sometime you can be so secure that the system becomes worthless.
> >
> > What used to be a simple thing of replacing disks has now been difficult
> > at best.
> > What I fixed is to get rid of the logical names in in the fstab and went
> > back to the /dev/sda1 etc.   This was done because I didn't have a good
> > way to look at disks and their names but knew the hardware.
>
> If you mean labels then you can find filesystems label info via e2label or
> findfs .
>
> > For back up on paper you need to do "df" and pipe it to lpr, keep in you
> > file folder as a true back up.
> >
> > You can easily create this problem by simply unplugging a disk and trying
> > a reboot.
>
> Can you explain this in more detail.
What you have to do to create the problem is to unplug a disk that is 
referenced in "fstab" and power on the system.
I just repeated this same thing on Susi 9.2 and I got the same system problem.
I gave it my root passwd and was able to edit /etc/fstab, comment out the 
removed drive and it booted perfectly.

> > I have three backups but I never had a disk that was good but the
> > electronics became intermittent as a function of temperature.  suspect a
> > bad solder joint or circuit trace crack somewhere.   The symptom was a
> > nice running drive that was sluggish.   A reboot solved the problem but
> > the failures began to increase.   Users don't seem to understand a system
> > being down.
> > Some of these boxes are shut down ever six months for cleaning.
> >
> > Disks being cheep it time to install a new one and toss the old one.
> >
> > Larry Linder
>
> -Connie Sieh