Thanks Steff, I bookmarked your links.
It is probably a good idea (as you suggested) to linger around the debian forums as well.
Definitely gets you knowing the system at the very least and Debian is worth the effort most things just work like they should. A couple of programs you should look at installing just in case they don't are apt-listchanges and apt-listbugs which show you a screen for each during your upgrading that lists the changes and bugs with the packges, the list bugs one can be misleading sometimes so it is always a good idea to go to http://bugs.debian.org and check the reports some people seem to add a comment to bugs that are months old and get them back into the system most times though it is just change logs that you get to see. You may want to go to http://lists.debian.org and subscribe to the debian-security-announce mailing list as well so you get notified anytime a new package comes out due to a problem you might if you not mind about 200-250 emails a day want to try debian-user although you might want to use a newsreader to check it out there's lots of good information on that list.Originally Posted by massai
Thanks Steff, I bookmarked your links.
It is probably a good idea (as you suggested) to linger around the debian forums as well.
More bad lack.
(It seems that every single troubleshooting scenario that can happen will happen , but I will try to keep the spirits up and look at the positive side. )
Anyway, just found out that mounting and filisystems are messed up.
There used to be a swap partition under the previous kernel. Now it is nowhere to be found.
Also, floppies cannot be mounted, CD roms cannot be mounted. Everything gives an error of some sort.
After inspecting the dmesg entries, it looks like all the drives and partisions have been recognized by the kernel during boot but things have changed and the old fstab needs to be revamped.
What is the best way to do this ?
This is a grab of the relevant portion of dmesg entries:
This is the current fstab file:Code:hdb: QUANTUM FIREBALL SE4.3A, ATA DISK drive ide0 at 0x1f0-0x1f7,0x3f6 on irq 14 hdc: Pioneer DVD-ROM ATAPIModel DVD-106S 012, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive hdd: PLEXTOR CD-R PX-W1610A, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive ide1 at 0x170-0x177,0x376 on irq 15 hdb: max request size: 128KiB hdb: 8418816 sectors (4310 MB) w/80KiB Cache, CHS=14848/9/63 hdb: hdb1 hdb2 < hdb5 > ide-cd: passing drive hdc to ide-scsi emulation. ide-cd: passing drive hdd to ide-scsi emulation. ide-scsi is deprecated for cd burning! Use ide-cd and give dev=/dev/hdX as device scsi0 : SCSI host adapter emulation for IDE ATAPI devices Vendor: PIONEER Model: DVD-ROM DVD-106 Rev: 1.22 Type: CD-ROM ANSI SCSI revision: 02 scsi1 : SCSI host adapter emulation for IDE ATAPI devices Vendor: PLEXTOR Model: CD-R PX-W1610A Rev: 1.03 Type: CD-ROM ANSI SCSI revision: 02 sr0: scsi3-mmc drive: 15x/40x cd/rw xa/form2 cdda tray Uniform CD-ROM driver Revision: 3.12 Attached scsi CD-ROM sr0 at scsi0, channel 0, id 0, lun 0 sr1: scsi3-mmc drive: 40x/40x writer cd/rw xa/form2 cdda tray Attached scsi CD-ROM sr1 at scsi1, channel 0, id 0, lun 0
So far the new world order looks like:Code:# /etc/fstab: filesystem table. # # filesystem mountpoint type options dump pass /dev/hdb1 / ext3 defaults,errors=remount-ro 0 1 /dev/hdb2 none swap sw 0 0 /dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy ext2,ext3,vfat defaults,user,noauto,showexec,umask=022 0 0 /dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom iso9660 defaults,ro,user,noexec,noauto 0 0 /dev/cdrom1 /mnt/cdrom1 iso9660 defaults,ro,user,noexec,noauto 0 0 /dev/dvd /mnt/dvd iso9660 defaults,ro,user,noexec,noauto 0 0 /dev/cdaudio /mnt/cdaudio iso9660 defaults,ro,user,noexec,noauto 0 0 none /sys sysfs defaults 0 0 proc /proc proc defaults 0 0 usbdevfs /proc/bus/usb usbdevfs defaults 0 0
hdb1 (Main partition)
hdb2 (swap partition)
sr0 (DVD/CD)
sr1 (CD-rw)
..... I will dig deeper to see if I can figure this out...
Update-01:
The floppy issue has been resolved. It is now possible to mount floppies.
(part of the problem was the disk I was testing seemed to have a bad superblock.... although I am not sure how that happened; that floppy was formated and written on during the kernel upgrade process by an automatic script........ I am inocent !..... I swear )
Update-02:
I can read vfat floppies, but when a floppy is formated with fdformat then it can not be mounted.
..........
Ok, got it.
Had to use "mkfs /dev/fd0" on the newly formated floppy.
Update-03:
Found relevant discussion http://www.knoppix.net/forum/viewtop...262&highlight=
That is also the case on my system; the user knoppix had been deleted, but the /etc/group file contained a lot of knoppix instances.
I usually use the actual device that is being used for the CD/DVD Rom(s). So for the first device sr0 you would use the device it links too which is scd0 and sr1 -> scd1 in the /etc/fstab. Then you would check the sequence of the links for all the devices listed in the fstab to make sure they point to the correct one. eg. my DVD burner for instance:
For a seperate burner I usually make a directory /cdrw and use that as the mount point in addition to the /dvd I had to make in this instance the /cdrom already existed. And while I'm thinking about it did you make the /sys directory for the line that is being mounted for the sysfs in the file? So for your file I would use (if you wanted all the extra entries in it only one line per device is necessary):Code:[04:45 PM Sat Jan 24: stephen @ ~] >$ ll /dev/cdrom lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 11 2004-01-24 16:05 /dev/cdrom -> /dev/cdrom0 [04:45 PM Sat Jan 24: stephen @ ~] >$ ll /dev/cdrom0 lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 9 2004-01-24 16:05 /dev/cdrom0 -> /dev/scd0 [04:45 PM Sat Jan 24: stephen @ ~] >$ ll /dev/dvd lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 9 2004-01-18 20:01 /dev/dvd -> /dev/scd0 [04:46 PM Sat Jan 24: stephen @ ~] >$ ll /dev/sr0 lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 4 2004-01-18 20:01 /dev/sr0 -> scd0 Entries in fstab /dev/scd0 /cdrom iso9660 ro,user,noauto 0 0 /dev/scd0 /dvd iso9660 ro,user,noauto 0 0
The last line for the /dev/cdaudio assumes that the first drive has the audio cable running from it to the sound card and you would make sure the links are pointing to the /dev/scd0 from both the /dev/dvd & /dev/cdaudio. Then you would correct the icons for the devices on the desktop by either editing or deleting and creating new ones this option I find is the best. How did you delete the user I believe deluser is the one that erases the configuration files for the user with a switch you can use ( --remove-all-files IIRC)?Code:/dev/scd0 /cdrom iso9660 defaults,ro,user,noexec,noauto 0 0 /dev/scd0 /dvd iso9660 defaults,ro,user,noexec,noauto 0 0 /dev/scd1 /cdrw iso9660 defaults,ro,user,noexec,noauto 0 0 /dev/scd0 /dev/dvd iso9660 defaults,ro,user,noexec,noauto 0 0 /dev/scd0 /dev/cdaudio iso9660 defaults,ro,user,noexec,noauto 0 0
Horror !And while I'm thinking about it did you make the /sys directory for the line that is being mounted for the sysfs in the file?
No I never did that...... ok.... done now. Thanks for catching that.
UPDATE-04: The CD-rw and DVD devices are now WORKING properly
I believe the fragments of the knoppix group name were causing internal confusion.
I am certain that the knoppix user was deleted (a few weeks ago) by using some command/script; I did not just merely trash the directory (but apparently whatever I did was not clean enough and left some garbage behind)
Yup, I will take your suggestion and use scd0 and scd1 in the /etc/fstab (although I had revised and it was working, I would rather trust you on this)
I chose to keep it simple. There are only two icons on the desktop representing the physical drives. So whatever I pop a disk (may it be data or audio) in the particular drive the filesystem should be mounted to the same point (so that I do not have to make adjustments or make and delete icons every the time)Code:# /etc/fstab: filesystem table. # # filesystem mountpoint type options dump pass /dev/hdb1 / ext3 defaults,errors=remount-ro 0 1 /dev/hdb5 none swap sw 0 0 /dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy auto user,noauto 0 0 /dev/scd0 /mnt/cdrom iso9660 user,ro,noexec,noauto 0 0 /dev/scd1 /mnt/cdrom1 iso9660 defaults,ro,user,noexec,noauto 0 0 #/dev/dvd /mnt/dvd iso9660 defaults,ro,user,noexec,noauto 0 0 none /sys sysfs defaults 0 0 proc /proc proc defaults 0 0 usbdevfs /proc/bus/usb usbdevfs defaults 0 0
The same goes for the Floppy (I chose to use "auto" in the fstab) so with a single icon I can mount all kinds of file systems and be done with it)
UPDTATE-05: Next troubleshooting point is the swap file.
Right now the swap file exists in an alternate universe of some sort.
When I do "fdsisk -l" here is what I get:
But when I do "free", this is what I get:Code:Disk /dev/hdb: 4310 MB, 4310433792 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 524 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/hdb1 * 1 491 3943926 83 Linux /dev/hdb2 492 524 265072+ 5 Extended /dev/hdb5 492 524 265041 82 Linux swap
...I will dig deeper....Code:root@ThisKnoppixBox:/home/Thomas# free total used free shared buffers cached Mem: 710428 488840 221588 0 52208 246048 -/+ buffers/cache: 190584 519844 Swap: 0 0 0
..to be continued...
Well it's set to the right type so have you mkswap /dev/hdb5 to format it as swap space then try mount -a to see if it gets mounted. And since you only have the two partitions on the drive you may want to delete the extended partition and just make a primary partition for the /swap then it would become the /dev/hdb2 for the space and then run the mkswap on it.
After examining the dmesg output I found the following error:
"Unable to find swap-space signature"
In the past couple of hours I tried several combinations of mkswap, swapon, swapoff, but with no success.
I will try once more
P.S. Stephen, thanks for pointing the direction for the umpteenth time (I begin to feel so much obliged after you have invested so much time with this newbie)
Swap partition is now detected !
I guess (being a newbie) it seems I collect all the right ingredients and have the right commands (most of the time) but I always mess-up the implementation.
In this case all cammands swapon, swapoff, mount -a, mkswap, etc.. etc were tried at some point.
This time I tried it in this order and it worked:
Code:mkswap /dev/hdb5 swapon /dev/hdb5Now I have to understand what you said about deleting the extended partition....Code:root@ThisKnoppixBox:/home/Thomas# mkswap /dev/hdb5 Setting up swapspace version 1, size = 271396 kB root@ThisKnoppixBox:/home/Thomas# swapon /dev/hdb5 root@ThisKnoppixBox:/home/Thomas# free total used free shared buffers cached Mem: 710428 248088 462340 0 14428 119980 -/+ buffers/cache: 113680 596748 Swap: 265032 0 265032
to be continued...
If you got the swap working like you have you should just leave it alone that is really just a cosmetic thing on the way I like my partitions set up I probably should not have suggested it to you to start with. Good to heard you got it going BTW.
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