INIT: No inittab file found

[waynegro]

Hi i'm having a problem booting, the system can't find the inittab file and telling me to enter runlevel, i tried entering 1 for single user and 6 but still giving me message that it can't find the designated files. If someone knows about this issue or a way to work around it please let me know, thanks.

[serz]

Hm.. yes, try the following.

Boot with a LiveCD disk (Knoppix for example, or whatever). Now, mount your Linux:

mount /mnt/hda1

If it's not hda, then remplace it for whatever it is.
Then, we will copy Knoppix's or whatever the distro is inittab's file to your Linux.

cp /etc/inittab /mnt/hda1/etc/

Again, you would remplace that hda1 to whatever it is.

Ok, that's it.. it should work.

[waynegro]

ok i tried knoppix but my server wasn't wasn't booting from cd and i couldn't get knoppix started. So i took the harddrive out and installed it as a slave in another box, now the problem i'm having is this; my extended partition is not being mounted, all my logical partitions have been mounted but I need access to my extended partition but when i try to mount it I get the error

mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/hdb2,
or too many mounted file systems
(aren't you trying to mount an extended partition,
instead of some logical partition inside?)

is there a way i can mount this partition or change its type so it can be mounted so I can fix the problem and place it back in the original machine?

[serz]

As root.

mkdir /mnt/hdb2
mount /dev/hdb2 /mnt/hdb2

Try that.. it might work.

[waynegro]

thanks but thats exactly what i did when i got the message that i posted in my previous message.. please if there are any other suggestions it would really help or if there is another way for me to access that extended partition please let me know.

[Seren]

Waynegro, I hope I'm not being dense, but why are you trying to mount the extended partition rather then the logical partition within it for Mandrake root? I've always mounted the logical partitions, and never the extended ones themselves, and have never had a reason to. Just to test this, I tried, and got the error:
/dev/hdb2: No such file or directory
mount: you must specify the filesystem type

Your error message said among other things:
(aren't you trying to mount an extended partition,
instead of some logical partition inside?)\

which looks like a suggestion to try a logical partition instead.

What do you get when you do fdisk /dev/hdb and then enter p ?

[waynegro]

Well the reason I need to access the extended partition /dev/hdb2 is because there is a symlink in it which is accessing the etc/ dir which was moved by mistake into the usr/ dir a long time ago because the / partition didn't have enough space to begin with, big mistake! This symlink needs to be deleted and etc/ needs to be moved to / directory. Now I have access to etc/ which is located in /dev/hdb7 and I have that logical partition mounted. Is there a way for me to move etc/ to the correct location so the server can boot when I place this drive back? I admit my mistake of moving the etc/ was huge but I was a newbie and didn't know better, when the server rebooted all hell broke and now I"m stuck with this, if you know of a way out of this please let me know. Here is the fdisk /dev/hdb2 with printed partition table.

Disk /dev/hdb: 40.0 GB, 40020664320 bytes
240 heads, 63 sectors/track, 5169 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 15120 * 512 = 7741440 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hdb1 * 1 69 521608+ 83 Linux
/dev/hdb2 70 5168 38548440 5 Extended
/dev/hdb5 70 346 2094088+ 82 Linux swap
/dev/hdb6 5102 5168 506488+ 83 Linux
/dev/hdb7 347 1588 9389488+ 83 Linux
/dev/hdb8 1589 3344 13275328+ 83 Linux
/dev/hdb9 3345 5101 13282888+ 83 Linux

thanks..

[waynegro]

ok i figured it out! the / dir was located in /dev/hdb1 and thats the only one i wasn't mounting, anyway thats where the etc/ symlink was located and so i deleted it and moved etc/ in there plugged it into its original location and voila! its working... guys i really appreciate your help, thank you!