FC4 Install breaking FSTAB File - NOT SWAP GARBAGE BUG

Tue Sep 27 21:58:48 UTC 2005

Rick thank you so much for turning me onto the e2label command, I guess
it does help to read the bottom of a man page some time.  Anyway, I
found the problem, the installer segmented the partitions on my drive,
but it failed to format them into ext3.  There were three total
partitions that were messed up, and I fixed one of them just to make
sure I had found the issue.  I reformatted the partion, labeled it, then
mounted it, boom she booted fine with the new partion.  I cant thank you
enough for the e2label command, it will be used heavily in my arsenal
now :)

After speakwing with some friends I decided to drop FC4 and go to FC3.
so far I have accomplished more in the past 24 hours than I did in 4
days with FC4.  I guess I can atleast say I was able to get it up and
running :)  But I don't have the time these days to be trail blazing the
path of Fedora, I get enough of it at work!

Im sure we'll cross again on the discussion lists :)

Cheers Again!

SK

-----Original Message-----
From: redhat-install-list-bounces at redhat.com
[mailto:redhat-install-list-bounces at redhat.com] On Behalf Of Rick
Stevens
Sent: Monday, September 26, 2005 06:22 PM
To: Getting started with Red Hat Linux
Subject: RE: FC4 Install breaking FSTAB File - NOT SWAP GARBAGE BUG

On Mon, 2005-09-26 at 19:28 -0500, Edward.D.Kramer at wellsfargo.com wrote:
> Thanks Rick I will give the e2label command a shot, I have never seen
or
> heard of it before, so Im looking forward to using it.  Im fairly
> comfortable with the mtab file and fstab, I guess that's why I was so
> shocked when things weren't working.

Again, you should NEVER have to touch /etc/mtab.  It is maintained by
the mount command itself.

> I even had no problem adding a 250GB(with 130 GB of music on it) HD
from
> my previous RH9 environment, created the mtab entry and fstab, it
> mounted perfectly fine.   

Again, /etc/mtab is maintained by mount(1).

> The error message I get is during boot, and it literally says
something
> like:
> 
> Error on Invalid Line #X where X is the line number that sets the
> partition label for /home or /opt. Then is prompts for Control-D or
> Maintenance mode.

It's asking for the CTRL-D stuff because you have "2" at the end of the
lines, meaning that the filesystem MUST be checked via fsck, but after
any other filesystems that have a "1" at the end.

>   No more no less. I have never had any problems like
> this installing Redhat before.  I have been using it since RH 5.2 back
> when you had to compile your own tulip.c just to get Ethernet running
:)

Only if you had the "new" DECchip ethernet card, Edward!  ;-)

> Anyway, I will see what the actual label is.

Did you try the mount without labels?  You can also do that
in /etc/fstab, just use "/dev/hdax" instead of "LABEL=/home").

> I spoke with a bunch of my collegues and they all recommended going to
> FC3 instead.  Thoughts on that statement?

No, I wouldn't bother.  FC3 and FC4 both use the 2.6 kernel and
filesystem utilities.  This sounds like the old "quantum leap up four
levels of OS updates"...there are going to be some glitches.  In this
case, it sounds like an oopsie in anaconda's handling of existing
labels--especially if the partitions will mount using the device name.

Personally, I don't like using labels.  There can be issues if you add a
drive with a partition that has a label that's the same as one on the
main drive...which one the system will actually mount is anyone's guess
at that point.

To paraphrase Heisenberg,  "You can never know what's mounted!"

Oh, and by the way, we prefer bottom posting on this list.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: redhat-install-list-bounces at redhat.com
> [mailto:redhat-install-list-bounces at redhat.com] On Behalf Of Rick
> Stevens
> Sent: Monday, September 26, 2005 04:51 PM
> To: Getting started with Red Hat Linux
> Subject: Re: FC4 Install breaking FSTAB File - NOT SWAP GARBAGE BUG
> 
> 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
----------------------------------------------------------------------
- Rick Stevens, Senior Systems Engineer     rstevens at vitalstream.com -
- VitalStream, Inc.                       http://www.vitalstream.com -
-                                                                    -
- Treat each day as if it's your last...a lot of crying and whining  -
-      usually gets you what you want!              -- Sam Sledge    -
----------------------------------------------------------------------

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