Fail to mount partitions at boot

[satimis]

Hi folks,

CentOS 4.4 x86_64

Just finished installation and undergoing configeration. For unknown reason the PC failed to mount other partitions except / with following warning popup on text scrolling;

mount : none already mounted or /dev/pts busy
mount : none already mounted or /sys busy
rc.sysinit: Mounting local filesystem: failed
mount: /dev/sda1 already mounted or /boot busy
mount: /dev/sda7 already mounted or /home busy
mount: /dev/sda5 already mounted or /usr busy
mount: /dev/sda3 already mounted or /var busy
etc.

Finally it booted to runlevel-3

But I was not allowed to make change on root /etc/fstab as root nor to start X


# ls -l /etc/fstab

-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 940 Mar 24 12:23 /etc/fstab

# df -h

Filesystem   Size  Used  Avail  Use%  Mounted on
/dev/sda2    9.7G  287M  8.9G     4%  /

Other partitions not mounted.

# fdisk -l

Device	    Boot   Start    End	     Blocks	Id	System
/dev/sda1   *	       1     13	     104391	83	Linux
/dev/sda2	      14   1288	   10241437+  	83	Linux
/dev/sda3	    1289   7662	   51199155  	83	Linux
/dev/sda4	    7663  19457	   94743337+  	 5	Extended
/dev/sda5	    7663  14036    51199123+	83	Linux
/dev/sda6	   14037  14163     1020096	82	Linux swap
/dev/sda7	   14164  19457    42524023+	83	Linux

Pls advise how to fix the problem. TIA


B.R.
satimis

[bhaslinux]

if you have booted to runlevel 3, can you check after logging-in to see if you can create files in /etc/ folder.
Eg:- go to /etc and execute touch test
and say ls -l test
if that is not successful, then, the problem is that the partitions you are talking about is mounted already but the /etc/mtab is not getting updates since / is mounted read-only.

[satimis]

Hi bhaslinux,

Eg:- go to /etc and execute touch test
and say ls -l test

# touch /etc/test
touch: cannot touch `/etc/test': Read-only file system

# ls -l /etc/lest
ls: /etc/test: No such file or directory.

if that is not successful, then, the problem is that the partitions you are talking about is mounted already but the /etc/mtab is not getting updates since / is mounted read-only.

How to change it back to "rw"? TIA


B.R.
satimis

[bhaslinux]

for some reasons mounting root partition to rw is failing.
This needs to be researched in your machine.
Before that,
when booting into linux
1. press spacebar and stop the coutdown timer in grub
2. press 'e' and this will bring you to a screen in grub containing
the root, kernel and initrd lines
3. Find the line "kernel" (use arrow keys) and press 'e'
3. in the kernel line there will be a word 'ro' -> change that to rw
4. now type 'b' and you will have root mounted as read-write

Just remember that you are mouting root as rw whcih means there can be
serious file system corruption if there are some filesystem errors unchecked
by fsck. Make sure you backup your data before proceeding ! If this is a new system which you are experimenting with then it is all fine.

But you have to look at the messages in /var/log/messages to find out why exactly the rw mount of root is failing. That would be more involved troubleshooting and cannot be done via forums AFAIK.

[satimis]

Hi bhaslinux,


CentOS 4.4 amd64 revives after performing following steps

- started PC with a LiveCD
- mount / rw
- edited /etc/fstab
changing "grpquote" to "grpquota"
- rebooted PC

I'm surprised one typo "grpquote" can make the whole system failing to work.


B.R.
satimis