file system errors and empy fstab

[Ken Schutte]

Hello,

I'm what happened, but last time I booted my system (FC3 on IBM x40 
thinkpad), I get the following:

*** An error occurred during the file system check.
*** Dropping you to a shell; the system will reboot
*** when you leave the shell.
*** Warning -- SELinux is active
*** Disabling security enforcement for system recovery.
*** Run 'setenforce 1' to reenable.
Give root password for maintenance
(or type Control-D to continue):

It also gave some other errors about not finding /dev/pts, etc.  When, I 
  log in as root like it says above, I checked my /etc/fstab and it's 
empty (only a comment, # This file is edited by fstab-sync - see 'man 
fstab-sync' for details).  I thought I could try to put some entries in 
there, but, when logging in in this "repair" mode or in working from a 
Knoppix CD, the filesystem is mounted as read-only.

I was able to copy out any important files using Knoppix, so I'm not too 
worried about loosing data now, but I'd like to figure out what's going 
on and fix it.  I also tried running '/sbin/fsck -t ext3 /dev/hda6' - 
this gave me a warning about fixing my fstab file and then said:
"/: clean, <N>/<N> files, <N>/<N> blocks"

Is my fstab the culprit?  Do I have to write it by hand?  If so, how do 
I make it writable?

Any help is really appreciated.

thanks,
Ken