On Tue, Jun 19, 2012 at 5:11 AM, Arthur Dent <misc.lists@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > On Mon, 2012-06-18 at 12:47 -0700, Joe Zeff wrote: >> On 06/18/2012 12:32 PM, Arthur Dent wrote: >> > Can anyone guide me through troubleshooting and hopfully fixing this >> > without hosing my system? >> >> Two questions: first, can you boot into an earlier kernel? Second, if >> you can't, do you have access to a LiveCD? (Doesn't even have to be >> Fedora; just something that can get you to a working system.) > > Well this is weird! > > I was thinking along the same lines. I found a F14 liveCD and that > booted just fine. Had a little poke around the disks using the disk > utility (which reported both hard drives as healthy) and then decided to > try the original F16 installation disk (not a liveCD) as a rescue disk. > Rescue mode failed with a "Fatal error" (Sorry I didn't write it down) > but I just saw a strange error about mounting one of the other > partitions on the disk (I have this partition mounted from fstab). So I > went back to the liveCD, and edited the fstab, commenting out the > relevant entry and... > The system boots fine! > (Here's the weird bit) I then uncommented the same line (so it once > again tries to mount the partition) and... > It still works fine! > > So what gives? In F3 or so to F15, I have some partitions that, if they boot a little slower than others, block the boot process. Sometimes, specifying those partitions noauto in /etc/fstab helps, sometimes it blocks anyway. Once it boots, I can generally mount the problem child partitions by hand. > Answering your first question - no I could not boot into an earlier > kernel. The grub failure seemed to be before that choice even came up - > so why would grub be worried about a partition mounted from fstab which > is surely much later in the boot process? > > Why do I have a working system again simply by changing fstab and then > changing it back again? > > I have a working system and that's the main thing - but if anyone can > shed any light as to what went wrong I would be very grateful. > > Joe, thanks for your help. > > Thanks again to all. > > Mark > > > -- > users mailing list > users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx > To unsubscribe or change subscription options: > https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/users > Guidelines: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines > Have a question? Ask away: http://ask.fedoraproject.org > -- -- Joel Rees -- users mailing list users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe or change subscription options: https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/users Guidelines: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines Have a question? Ask away: http://ask.fedoraproject.org