On Sun, 10 Feb 2002, Prasad Chaturvedula wrote: > What I meant whether I would be doing something wrong if I changed the > option to readwrite. My linux ext2 is on /dev/hda6. I tried making a > ... Quite possibly. Normal boot sequence goes like this (in part): 1. Root (/) gets mounted ro (readonly) so that a fsck (filesystem check and possible repairs) can be done (dangerous on a mounted and rw active filesystem). Then in the system initialization scripts: 2. Root gets the fsck 3. If successful, root gets remounted rw with a command similar to this: mount -n -o remount,rw / That can also be done by hand, without changing lilo or loadlin. 4. Else if the fsck fails, you are dropped into system maintenance mode, and the root password will be immediately demanded (unless the system initialization scripts are broken, as Red Hat's was back around version 4.2). If you are in this mode, type "runlevel" and you should see that the first number output is "1", aka "s", aka single user maintenance mode (the second number is the last runlevel, probably "N" (none). If this correct, manually fsck root: fsck -f / You'll likely get a lot of errors, since apparently the normal fsck in the boot scripts failed for some reason. 5. Then you can remount as above, and run lilo, etc. Mounting a filesystem with errors can lead to severe, unrecoverable, filesystem damage (eg, re-install, lose data). Usually filesystem errors are caused by improper shutdown, by newbie pushing the power or reset button, or more likely, power glitch (momentary power loss) or outage. We don't include crashes, because they are so rare (except I had some buggy hardware on one machine that would hose it). LCR -- L. C. Robinson reply to no_spam+munged_lcr@onewest.net.invalid People buy MicroShaft for compatibility, but get incompatibility and instability instead. This is award winning "innovation". Find out how MS holds your data hostage with "The *Lens*"; see "CyberSnare" at http://www.netaction.org/msoft/cybersnare.html