Jonas, what happens if you leave off the root= bit? I am getting at, boot using nothing but the rescue disk. It ought to be enough to get you to a prompt, from there you can mount /mnt /dev/hda7 and play around with things in there....
good luck On Mon, Sep 27, 1999 at 08:32:06AM +0200, Jonas Steverud wrote: > > I updated my potato system last Thursday (23rd of September) and it > broke my system beyond belief. > > When I in dselect installed the packages I've just fetched (using > ftp.uk.debian.org) I got some errormessages about not recognized > packages. If I understood it correctly the files where broken. > > Since I thought that the files was not installed I payed it no furhter > attention and shutdown. Bad move. > > Upon shutdown INIT (?) complains about "nothing more to run in this > runlevel" and halts. I reboot (reset-button on computer) and INIT > complains about it can't execute /etc/init.d/rcS. I get the > login prompt but cannot login as ordinary user nor root. > > I try the boot disc. No success (not very surprising). > > I download the resucedisc and "boot: rescue root=/dec/hda7" which > gives me this (I get the same for the two above): > > ------8<----- > INIT: Version 2.77 booting > INIT: Cannot execute execute "/etc/init.d/rcS" > INIT: Entering runlevel 2 > INIT: Cannot execute execute "/etc/init.d/rc" > > Debian GNU/Linux potato (none) tty1 > > (none) login: root > login[10]: PAM unabvle to resolve symbol pam_sm_authenticate > login[10]: PAM unabvle to resolve symbol pam_sm_setcred > login[10]: PAM unabvle to resolve symbol pam_sm_authenticate > login[10]: PAM unabvle to resolve symbol pam_sm_setcred > password: [excuse me a moment] > PAM_unix[10]: (login) session opened for user root by js(uid=0) > login[10]: unable to change tty '/dev/tty1' for user 'root' > > login[10]: unable to change tty '/dev/tty1'; Illegal seek > > {new login prompt} > > ------8<----- > > How can I fix this? I cannot login to my system to see what is wrong! > > If I get on the system I can grap the output from script(1) (ran > dselect under it) and put it on my homepage for debug. > > Complete reinstall of the system is not an option since I have quite > some files not backed up. The irony is that I was planning to back up > the system to a cdr last weekend. > > /Jonas, with a FUBAR linux-system. > -- > ( Jonas Steverud @ www.dtek.chalmers.se/~d4jonas/ ! Wei Wu Wei ) > ( U2MoL, Roleplaying, LaTeX, Emacs/Gnus, SCWM, etc. ! To Do Without Do ) > > > -- > Unsubscribe? mail -s unsubscribe [EMAIL PROTECTED] < /dev/null -- Seth Arnold | http://www.willamette.edu/~sarnold/ Hate spam? See http://maps.vix.com/rbl/ for help Hi! I'm a .signature virus! Copy me into your ~/.signature to help me spread!