> Today, I screwed up one of my Linux machines (a test one). I was able > to get out of it without doing a restore. > > But now, it gets me wondering what are the ways the experts get out of > this situation: > > Problem: I was adding a volume. I was basically following the > directions that were on the Turbolinux website. (I have Suse and could > have/should have used Yast.) > > Well, I messed up the /etc/fstab and of course, I didn't keep a copy of > the origional.
Presumambly now you're mor expert you will have a backup. Consider a paper record for each system detailing critical system information such as fstab, disk partitions (at least the important ones), configuration changes and important system events such as boots. > > When I booted Linux, a lot of things didn't come up. It seemed like > most startup scripts failed. More importantly, IP didn't come up. > > So, here I was stuck with the 3215 console interface (line mode, no full > screen). > > Pico and Joe weren't found. VI was found. But VI is full screen. Learn to use ed. You probably have ed too. > (I got around this as I brought up VI on fstab on another image and > experimented to see how to delete the 3rd line. 3d. So where I > couldn't tell what I was doing, VI accepted the 3d command and I could > resave the file. Problem solved. This time.) > > So.... > > 1. How to you edit a file with a line mode terminal? Is it available > very early in the boot process? If you want to add a line echo new line >>file-to-change Best to back it up first in case of further accidents. To delete a line grep -v 'text identifying line' >new-file Examine new-file, when you have the grep right mv new-file file-to-change > 2. Is there a way of mounting Linux4 150 to another Linux image and fix > the files from another system? Probably. I'll leave that to folks who've done it (or tried). Certainly some kind of rescue system is good. It doesn't have to be very current (you probably don't need all the latest fixes, except for those problems that are going to trash your recovery efforts), but it does have to me able to be made to work with only a little effort. Red Hat's rescue CD for RHL 7.x on Intel is a good example of this. It boots, asks sme questions, and depending on answers configures networking, nfs client services and mounts everything it can find. -- Cheers John Summerfield Microsoft's most solid OS: http://www.geocities.com/rcwoolley/ Note: mail delivered to me is deemed to be intended for me, for my disposition. ============================== If you don't like being told you're wrong, be right!
