problems upgrading from FC6 to F7

[Tim]

On Sun, 2007-06-24 at 01:55 -0400, Marc wrote:
> I am having trouble with an upgrade on my Dell Latitude D610 laptop.
> I have files I need to get off of the machine but I cannot get it to
> fully boot.  When I boot up it makes it to the following point:
> 
> ....mounting local filesystem......OK
> ....enabling filesystem quotas.....OK
> ....enabling /etc/fstab swaps.......Failed

If it's just the swap files, you can try booting up into run level three
instead of five.  There's less overhead in that level, and you probably
won't need to use any swap.  Then you can try and edit your fstab file,
or fix up your swap.

When you get the grub menu, go into the option that lets you
(temporarily) edit an entry, append a space and a 3 onto the end of the
kernel line.  Delete the rhgb and quiet parameters, while you're at it.
You might see some more information about what's going wrong while
booting, then.

> Because of the need to rescue the files on there, I used the 'rescue'
> disk, and did an 'upgrade only' type of install.  Both times did not
> fix my /etc/fstab.  Twice I have done the full run of the cd which
> would seem to fix major system files since they are not user data.
> 
> IOW I would think that Anaconda would straighten out the system files
> in the new fedora 7 environment, rather than rely upon what may or may
> not be screwed up with the existing setup --irrelevant as to whether
> the existing system is hosed or not.  (This to me, would seem to
> indicate a design flaw with anaconda, but that is a bit of a separate
> conversation.)

Dunno if it screwed up, or you're asking too much of it.  But post your
fstab file, and the output of "fdisk -l" (do that as root).

> Another separate conversation would be how to understand what made
> this thing happen.   I have not been using fedora much lately, and I
> have certainly not been in there goofing fstab settings around.  Why
> would my fstab just spontaneously corrupt anyway?

If there's a drive corruption, and it happens to be on the sector where
your fstab file is...  But we can only guess.

> Repair-wise, I don't know how to fix it, or what I would do if I could
> see it.  If I could boot up further in the boot sequence, I would go
> to another virtual terminal and try to vi the file, but I do not think
> the kernel and/or ramdisk have fully done their dance together at this
> point.  Hung up is hung up.

Boot from the rescue disc, you're using its environment, then.  You'll
avoid most problems with your installed Linux system, that way.

-- 
(This box runs FC7, my others still run FC 4, 5, 6, & CentOS 5.0, in
 case that's important to the thread.)

Don't send private replies to my address, the mailbox is ignored.
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