Hi there,

I hope that someone here will be able to help me with the following. I 
recently tried to install a Retrospect backup client to my Scientific Linux 
6.1 system. The installation hung, and the next time I tried to boot the 
system, it refused to start and hung at this point:


Mounting local filesystems: error writing /etc/mtab.tmp: No space left on 
device
error writing /etc/mtab.tmp: No space left on device
error writing /etc/mtab.tmp: No space left on device
mount: devpts already mounted or /dev/pts busy
mount: sysfs already mounted or /sys busy [FAILED]
Enabling local filesystem quotas: [OK]
Enabling /etc/fstab swaps: [OK]
Entering non interactive startup
Calling the system activity data collector (sadc):
Starting monitoring for VG vg_gapqub01: 3 logical volume(s) in volume 
group “vg_gapqub01" monitored  [ok]
dkms: running auto installation service for kernel 2.6.32-279.5.1el6.x86_64

And at that point the boot routine stops. I have tried to reboot several 
times. The result is always the same. The boot process never proceeds 
beyond this point.

I have no clue what happened here. The hard disc certainly should not be 
full at this stage. I even booted Scientific Linux from the Live CD to free 
some space deleting a number of old files, but this had no effect. I am at 
a loss here. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Dirk