[CentOS] CentOS Live CD for System Rescue - How to get full root access to HD?

Tue Nov 11 15:58:36 UTC 2008
Lanny Marcus <lmmailinglists at gmail.com>

On Tue, Nov 11, 2008 at 9:10 AM, Robert <kerplop at sbcglobal.net> wrote:
> Lanny Marcus wrote:
>> Booting from the CentOS 5.2 Installation DVD (or the first
>> Installation CD), one can type "linux rescue" and then "chroot
>> /mnt/sysimage" and have full root access to the OS  on the HD. For
>> future reference, I would like to know what I did wrong, the past
>> couple of days, when trying to use the CentOS 5.2 i386 Live CD, for
>> rescue. From a terminal, "su -" did not seem to get me root access to
>> the hard drive. What command should I have used, with the Live CD? The
>> access I had was read only. (As it turns out, I could have fixed the
>> problem, without the LiveCD, but I didn't know that, 3 days ago....
>> :-)   )  TIA.  Lanny

<snip (output of mount command)

> the boot partition, /dev/hda2 was mounted Read-Only (ro).
> To work around that little problem, simply:
> # mount /dev/hda2 -o rw,remount
> which remounts the partition Read-Write so you can work with it instead of
> only observe.

Thanks!

> Now, I believe the Live CD is missing the chroot command.  This means you
> have to do the "bookkeeping" manually.  The grub.conf file (normally at
>  /boot/grub/grub.conf) will now appear at /mnt/disc/hda2/grub/grub.conf.
>  Note that there is no "/boot" in that path.

Yes. The paths were very different, when running on the Live CD.

> And yes, the farther you are from the monitor, the clearer it all becomes.

Many years ago, I bought a handheld VHF radio transceiver. In the
manual, is said something like, "if you get frustrated, put the radio
down and go get a cup of coffee".  Distance from the problem
frequently helps... I appreciate your input!