fstab-sync wipes out /etc/fstab

Thomas Taylor linxt at comcast.net
Sat Oct 15 07:54:23 UTC 2005


On Friday 14 October 2005 22:11, Dan wrote:
> On Sat, October 15, 2005 12:37 pm, Bill Perkins wrote:
> > In the mean time, you could try booting into rescue mode (saw something
> > about that a few days ago on this list) using either the ISO image from
> > the Fedora website, or you can get there with the first disk of the
> > distro's set. If you can get that far, write down the /etc/fstab file
> > that is (hopefully) generated when booting into rescue mode (I haven't
> > tried this as yet, although I may give it a shot just to see what we wind
> > up with). If that doesn't work, I'd try running fdisk -l to get a list of
> > the disks and partitions, and work from memory and poking around (mount
> > the partitions one at a time and examine them) to build a new fstab.
> > FWIW, here is what mine looks like:
>
> Hey Bill,
>
> I did boot into rescue mode again and managed to reconstruct my
> /etc/fstab. After a few reboot attempts i think i have managed to rebuild
> fstab to its former glory.
>
> Posting this from the formerly unbootable machine.
>
> BTW i do actually take regular backups of /etc, just not this machine. I
> guess that will change now :)
>
> I wonder if it would be feasable to have fstab-sync take a backup of
> /etc/fstab, or perform some sanity tests (ie there is a /, /proc, /sys
> etc) before making changes? Any thoughts/comments?
>
> Cheers,
>
> Dan

Hi Dan:

Intrigueing idea, but not directly applicable.  "fstab-sync" is an elf binary, 
not a script so not easy to change.

But you COULD write a script to copy or rename the /etc/fstab file and then 
call the "/usr/sbin/fstab-sync" program.  

Tom

-- 
Tom Taylor
Linux user #263467
Federal Way, WA
Iraq war: 1,962 US soldiers dead and counting









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