Lost fstab file

Bob McClure Jr bob at bobcatos.com
Fri Oct 5 16:17:41 UTC 2007


On Fri, Oct 05, 2007 at 10:06:20AM -0400, Bill Jones wrote:
>  
> Help please...
> 
> I somehow managed to forget to restore my fstab file before shutting
> down my server. Now it won't boot (of course).
> Is there a way to recover a missing fstab file? I moved it to fstab.orig
> prior to the shutdown. I have RHEL 4.
> I tried linux rescue but it doesn't seem to work.

Well, it won't find and mount your filesystems for the same reason it
won't boot.  You'll have to do it manually.

Boot to rescue mode, but don't let it try to find and mount the
filesystems.  Note that at this point, I assume you know what your
root partition is.  If not, try to boot normally and stop things at
the grub screen to see what is the root partition.

Meanwhile, back at rescue mode, you may need to make a mount point.
Do an

  ls /mnt

to see what's available.  If you don't see anything you trust, make
one and mount your root filesystem.

  mkdir /mnt/hd
  # assumes root partition is /dev/hda5
  mount /dev/hda5 /mnt/hd
  cd /mnt/hd/etc
  mv fstab.orig fstab
  cd
  exit

If if over-assumed what you know about your system, let us know what
I missed.

> Thanks,
> Bill Jones 

Cheers,
-- 
Bob McClure, Jr.             Bobcat Open Systems, Inc.
bob at bobcatos.com             http://www.bobcatos.com
"Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under
heaven given to men by which we must be saved."  Acts 4:12 (NIV)




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