FC4 Install breaking FSTAB File - NOT SWAP GARBAGE BUG

[Rick Stevens]

On Mon, 2005-09-26 at 18:09 -0500, Edward.D.Kramer at wellsfargo.com wrote:
> I have been using RH9 for years and decided to make the jump to FC4
> and so far Im very disappointed.  I ran into the SWAP garbage bug and
> was able to get into resucue mode and clean up this line within the
> fstab file.  However, during my install I had created several
> partions, /, /boot, /home, /opt.  The / and /boot lines seem fine to
> be fine but the /home and /opt partitions were throwing invalid line
> errors.  I removed the lines and boom it started right up.  Now the
> problem is that, Im missing the disk space that I partitioned for, and
> I have attempted to remap the partitions in the mtab file and made the
> corresponding updates in the fstab file.  Boom Im still getting
> invalid line errors on in my fstab.  I can see the HAD partions have
> been created, I have tried mapping these in mtab file labeling it
> to /home, then using the following line FSTAB.   
> 
>  
> 
> Fstab entry
> 
> LABEL=/home            /home                   ext3    defaults 1 2
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> Any thoughts on what Im doing wrong?  Or is there some funky bug with
> the installer on partitions other than root and boot with FC4?

I should first recommend that you NEVER futz with /etc/mtab manually
unless you're really, really certain of what you're doing.  /etc/mtab is
the primary way the filesystem utilities know what's where.

I'd like to see exactly what errors you're getting with the lines in
fstab.  My initial guess is that there really aren't labels on the
filesystem as you think there are.  If you know what the partitions are,
try running "e2label <devicename>" (e.g. "e2label /dev/hda7") and verify
that the labels are what you think they are.  There may be an extra
space or something tacked on them that's not obvious.  You may even want
to do something like "e2label /dev/hda7 | od -c".  You should see
something like this:

	[root at nprophead Utilities]# e2label /dev/hda7 | od -c
	0000000   /   u   s   r  \n
	0000005

showing that there's no embedded spaces or anything in there.  Another
quick check is if you can mount them by device name instead of by
labels:

	mount /dev/hda7 /usr

If that works, then there's definitely something rotten in the labels.
You can use e2label to change them:

	[root at nprophead Utilities]# umount /usr
	[root at nprophead Utilities]# e2label /dev/hda7 /usr

then you can try to mount via labels again:

	[root at nprophead Utilities]# mount -L /usr /usr
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- Rick Stevens, Senior Systems Engineer     rstevens at vitalstream.com -
- VitalStream, Inc.                       http://www.vitalstream.com -
-                                                                    -
-   "Do you suffer from long-term memory loss?"  "I don't remember"  -
-                            -- Chumbawumba, "Amnesia" (TubThumping) -
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