Thanks to all (Rob, Rolf, Steven) for good suggestions!
No "linux-nonfb" and "failsafe" do not for me giving the same INIT messages. I was able to make some progress by booting with MDK 9.1 CD into "rescue", then going to console:
(a) Ran fsck.ext2 on my / and it complained that the superblock is bad. Ran it again with the alternate superblock (8193) and fixed a whole lot of problems (incorrect ref counts, etc.). Still no booting, get the same INIT messages
(b) Then I noticed that in my /etc there is no "rc.d" at all, no wonder "init" complaines that it "cannot execute /etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit" and there are no more processes at a runlevel. Also there is no "init.d", so all start/stop scripts are gone. Wonder how that could have happened???
More importantly, what could I do now short of reinstalling? I don't have "rc.d" backed up anywhere. Is it possible to get "rc.d" by installing an rpm, which one then? Or do these scripts get generated somehow during an install? Any ideas are welcome...
Thank you, Aleksey
$ urpmf /etc/rc.d initscripts:/etc/rc.d initscripts:/etc/rc.d/init.d initscripts:/etc/rc.d/init.d/alsa initscripts:/etc/rc.d/init.d/dm initscripts:/etc/rc.d/init.d/functions initscripts:/etc/rc.d/init.d/halt initscripts:/etc/rc.d/init.d/kheader initscripts:/etc/rc.d/init.d/killall initscripts:/etc/rc.d/init.d/mandrake_consmap initscripts:/etc/rc.d/init.d/mandrake_everytime initscripts:/etc/rc.d/init.d/mandrake_firstime initscripts:/etc/rc.d/init.d/netfs initscripts:/etc/rc.d/init.d/network initscripts:/etc/rc.d/init.d/partmon initscripts:/etc/rc.d/init.d/random initscripts:/etc/rc.d/init.d/rawdevices initscripts:/etc/rc.d/init.d/single initscripts:/etc/rc.d/init.d/sound initscripts:/etc/rc.d/init.d/usb initscripts:/etc/rc.d/rc initscripts:/etc/rc.d/rc.local initscripts:/etc/rc.d/rc.modules initscripts:/etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit initscripts:/etc/rc.d/rc0.d initscripts:/etc/rc.d/rc0.d/S00killall initscripts:/etc/rc.d/rc0.d/S01halt initscripts:/etc/rc.d/rc1.d initscripts:/etc/rc.d/rc1.d/S00single initscripts:/etc/rc.d/rc2.d initscripts:/etc/rc.d/rc2.d/S99local initscripts:/etc/rc.d/rc3.d initscripts:/etc/rc.d/rc3.d/S99local initscripts:/etc/rc.d/rc4.d initscripts:/etc/rc.d/rc4.d/S99local initscripts:/etc/rc.d/rc5.d initscripts:/etc/rc.d/rc5.d/S99local initscripts:/etc/rc.d/rc6.d initscripts:/etc/rc.d/rc6.d/S00killall initscripts:/etc/rc.d/rc6.d/S01reboot console-tools:/etc/rc.d/init.d/keytable sysklogd:/etc/rc.d/init.d/syslog vixie-cron:/etc/rc.d/init.d/crond xinetd:/etc/rc.d/init.d/xinetd portmap:/etc/rc.d/init.d/portmap XFree86-xfs:/etc/rc.d/init.d/xfs apache-conf:/etc/rc.d/init.d apache-conf:/etc/rc.d/init.d/httpd [..]
A lot more packages have files/directories in /etc/rc.d/././. Is your /home a separate partition? Can you mount and read it from a rescue session? Or, don't you say that 'failsafe' will boot for you? If so, you can do the work from there. You might need to run fsck again. Be careful. Think about saving /home before you do something radical. If you mount your installation on /mnt and chroot /mnt in the rescue session, you might be able to call man fsck to get some info.
Also, I thought there was an option to upgrade/repair an existing Mandrake installation when you booted CD1. Can't say from experience but such a process might work in this case. It would be better to copy the valuable things in /home somewhere safe, first. I would recommend installing on reiserfs if you have to do a complete install again. There are other journalling filesystems but I have had a good history with reiserfs.
Rolf
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