On Friday 24 December 2010 7:44 am, Jon Peatfield wrote:
> On Thu, 23 Dec 2010, Larry Linder wrote:
> > During the Boot process the files in /etc contain init files such as
> > "fstab" file system table.   If a disk listed in this file is not
> > available it drops you to run level 1.   You used to be able to modify
> > the init data files used during boot.   Enter the root "passwd", modify
> > files, save and reboot.   Now when you enter your root "passwd" you get
> > two notices and it fails.  At this point not even the rescue stuff works.
> > To demo problem - load SL 5.5 on a disk and load your apps on a second
> > disk. Once it is up and running shut it down, remove the data connection
> > to the second disk.   On boot up it fails and drops you to a run level of
> > 1.   At this point you are done.   This only happens on SL systems.  SUSE
> > and others work fine.
>
> I'm not sure if this is a troll.
>
> It seems to work for me.  Disks die and we have had our share of them.
> When a non-boot disk dies the boot fails to mount the fs and we end up
> (after a prompt for the root pw) in a shell where we can fix fstab etc.
That is the way it always had worked for the last 20 years.

> Note: apart from /boot/ we pretty much use LVM for all fs these days.
Plan to try it when new system is built and SL 6 is ready.

> If recovery from a failed 'data disk' didn't work there would be many more
> people complaining.  Maybe your setup is unusual in some way.
I can reproduce the problem in at least two systems running SL5.6
one a 32 bit system with a large number of SCSI disks  and a 64 bit MATX with 
4 SATA disks.  Same problem.

> Booting from the install media should allow access to all the file-systems
> as long as the kernel support is present.  Again it all seems to work as
> expected for me.
A new install always works.

>    -- Jon
The problem with setting user to root must have crept in sometime after SL 4 
and SL 5.2.    
All other systems in shop are SL 5.6 both 32 and 64 bit and they do the same 
thing.   Its not unique to hardware.