On Sat, Feb 4, 2012 at 9:20 AM, Larry Linder
<[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Here is how you can create the problem.
> Make a copy of your "fstab" corrupt the "fstab" to simulate a failed disk and
> reboot.
> It drops you to the maintenance prompt and asks you for a password - at this
> point you are done.
> The only rescue scheme we have found is to reinstall the system, recreate the
> disk partitions,  - failed disk, do not format partitions and after it writes
> a new "fstab", bail out - power off and restart.   System come up minus
> failed disk and everything works.
> Discovered this early late Sunday evening after a disk failure and major power
> failure to facility at the same time.
> Rude and Crude but it works.
>
> Larry Linder

Hi, Larry.

Oh, lordie, that's destructive. You really should be able to use a
"rescue" cd, such as the Scientific Linux installation boot.iso or
installationi DVD or PXE or Knoppix or *whatever* works, to boot in
the rescue environment. For SL disks, this will attempt to mount your
old "/" partition at /mnt/sysimage.

You then remount that old "/" partition in read-write mode, because it
won't be, edit /mnt/sysimage/etc/fstab, and reboot. And voila, done.

I used to use that stunt a lot when I was building remote Linux OS
installers. (Rebuild the swap space as a disk partition, store an OS
tarba;; in it, reboot with the swap space as your "/" partition,
rebuild the drives, and redeposit the OS on the rebuilt drives.
Fastest OS installer you've ever seen, especially if you pre-cache the
OS tarball. Also *much* faster than kickstart for building
virtualization guest images.

                                 Nico Kadel-Garcia