Inittab not found

[jashber]

Hello. I stupidly, like a knucklehead, turned off my computer before it finished booting Mandriva Linux Limited Edition 2005, version 10.2. Now I can't boot it up, it says the inittab file is missing. Can someone suggest what I should do? Thanks, and I promise not to be such a moron next time!

[oz]

a few options I can think of:

1) boot with the mandriva cd and select the repair option

2) do a fresh install of Mandriva as it only takes 15 to 30 minutes to reinstall

3) use a knoppix cd to boot into mandriva for repairing inittab, or to copy a new inittab file to the /etc directory

[jashber]

Hey, thanks for the help! How do I know how to repair the inittab file, though? Do you think that is the only thing damaged, or is it a sign of a total meltdown?

Gee, I never thought I could mess it up so badly just by turning it off in the boot process.

[timelord50]

How do I know how to repair the inittab file, though?

The can't find inittab error could be a symptom of something more serious - maybe a corrupted partition or boot loader or something. Anyway assuming its not here is the inittab from my system:

#
# inittab       This file describes how the INIT process should set up
#               the system in a certain run-level.
#
# Author&#58;       Miquel van Smoorenburg, <miquels@drinkel.nl.mugnet.org>
#               Modified for RHS Linux by Marc Ewing and Donnie Barnes
#

# Default runlevel. The runlevels used by Mandrakelinux are&#58;
#   0 - halt &#40;Do NOT set initdefault to this&#41;
#   1 - Single user mode
#   2 - Multiuser, without NFS &#40;The same as 3, if you do not have networking&#41;
#   3 - Full multiuser mode
#   4 - unused
#   5 - X11
#   6 - reboot &#40;Do NOT set initdefault to this&#41;
#
id&#58;3&#58;initdefault&#58;

# System initialization.
si&#58;&#58;sysinit&#58;/etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit

l0&#58;0&#58;wait&#58;/etc/rc.d/rc 0
l1&#58;1&#58;wait&#58;/etc/rc.d/rc 1
l2&#58;2&#58;wait&#58;/etc/rc.d/rc 2
l3&#58;3&#58;wait&#58;/etc/rc.d/rc 3
l4&#58;4&#58;wait&#58;/etc/rc.d/rc 4
l5&#58;5&#58;wait&#58;/etc/rc.d/rc 5
l6&#58;6&#58;wait&#58;/etc/rc.d/rc 6

# Trap CTRL-ALT-DELETE
ca&#58;&#58;ctrlaltdel&#58;/sbin/shutdown -t3 -r now

# When our UPS tells us power has failed, assume we have a few minutes
# of power left.  Schedule a shutdown for 2 minutes from now.
# This does, of course, assume you have powerd installed and your
# UPS connected and working correctly.
pf&#58;&#58;powerfail&#58;/sbin/shutdown -f -h +2 "Power Failure; System Shutting Down"

# If power was restored before the shutdown kicked in, cancel it.
pr&#58;12345&#58;powerokwait&#58;/sbin/shutdown -c "Power Restored; Shutdown Cancelled"


# Run gettys in standard runlevels
1&#58;2345&#58;respawn&#58;/sbin/mingetty tty1
2&#58;2345&#58;respawn&#58;/sbin/mingetty tty2
3&#58;2345&#58;respawn&#58;/sbin/mingetty tty3
4&#58;2345&#58;respawn&#58;/sbin/mingetty tty4
5&#58;2345&#58;respawn&#58;/sbin/mingetty tty5
6&#58;2345&#58;respawn&#58;/sbin/mingetty tty6

Should be the same on yours.