[CentOS] Reinstalled Windows and GRUB - Cannot boot Linux - fstab and grub.conf errors?

Lanny Marcus lmmailinglists at gmail.com
Mon Nov 10 20:58:37 UTC 2008


On Mon, Nov 10, 2008 at 11:38 AM, Phil Schaffner
<Philip.R.Schaffner at nasa.gov> wrote:
> Lanny Marcus wrote:
>> I have several Live CDs, but
>> don't know how to get real "root" privileges with them.
>
> Often "su -" in a terminal window is all that's required to get root for a
> live CD.>

Phil: I'm running on my CentOS 5.2 Live CD, in the belief that one is
better able to help me than the Knoppix or SystemRescue Live CDs (the
SystemRescue CD is very old).

On the GNOME Desktop, there's an Icon for "Local Hard Drives". If I
double click on that, it shows hda2 which is the /boot  ext3 partition
(102 MB)

There is also an Icon for "Local Logical Volumes". If I double click
on that, it shows VolGroup00-LogVol00  and everything is there, in the
LVM.   :-)

Here's the result of the "mount" command

[centos at localhost ~]$ mount
/dev/mapper/livecd-rw on / type ext3 (rw,noatime)
proc on /proc type proc (rw)
sysfs on /sys type sysfs (rw)
devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,gid=5,mode=620)
tmpfs on /dev/shm type tmpfs (rw)
none on /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc type binfmt_misc (rw)
/dev/hdc on /mnt/live type iso9660 (ro)
/dev/hda2 on /mnt/disc/hda2 type ext3 (ro)
/dev/mapper/VolGroup00-LogVol00 on /mnt/lvm/VolGroup00-LogVol00 type ext3 (ro)
sunrpc on /var/lib/nfs/rpc_pipefs type rpc_pipefs (rw)
[centos at localhost ~]$

Question: Is /hda3 mounted properly? I don't think so, because when I
try to boot Linux from the Grub menu on the HD, it gives me "Error 17:
Cannot mount selected partition"

Here's the contents of fstab (which I'm looking at Read Only)

/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00 /                       ext3    defaults        1 1
LABEL=/boot             /boot                   ext3    defaults        1 2
devpts                  /dev/pts                devpts  gid=5,mode=620  0 0
tmpfs                   /dev/shm                tmpfs   defaults        0 0
proc                    /proc                   proc    defaults        0 0
sysfs                   /sys                    sysfs   defaults        0 0
/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol01 swap                    swap    defaults        0 0
/dev/hda6       /mnt/win   ntfs-3g  rw,umask=0000,defaults 0 0

What I need to modify in fstab is the last line. I need to change it
from /dev/hda6 to /dev/hda1 so I can read/write NTFS files from
CentOS.

If I can get to the 2 configuration files  (fstab and grub.conf) with
true root access, so I can modify them, with Gedit  I should be able
to get this box working on Linux again.

Not sure of the proper locations to give for those files, so I can get
to them from a terminal window, after "su -", with gedit.

These are the types of trivial problems which cause newbies
frustration. On the other hand, there have been times, when my wife
and daughter cannot do something on M$ Windows and they can do it on
Linux.   :-)    This would be easier, I'm sure, if my CentOS 5
Installation DVD hadn't gotten damaged Saturday.

Your time, help and willingness to share your expertise are much
appreciated! Lanny



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