can't open /etc/fstab :-(

[Henk Poley]

I just booted my Knoppix system and it tells me:

<boot text>
INIT: version 2.78-knoppix booting
warning: can't open /etc/fstab: Invalid argument
warning: can't open /etc/mtab: Invalid argument
mount: can't find /proc in /etc/fstab or /etc/mtab
Loading /usr/share/keymaps/i386/qwerty/us.kmap.gz

after which it hangs

fsck told me that it removed 3 nodes or something, must be the problem... Can anybody give me hint what to do now?

I'll boot my Knoppix CD, in an hour or so, I'll take my dinner first.

[Henk Poley]

Hehe, I think I should have told I used the hdinstalled Knoppix

but anyways, I hope I have fixed it now. I used -more or less- the commands described in FaqResque:

sudo -s
mount -o remount,dev /mnt/hda9
cd /mnt/hda9/etc/
kedit ./fstab

It pointed out that both of my CD-ROM players were 'magicaly' added (probably by K3B), and both were mounted at /cdrom. They certainly weren't there the first days booted Knoppix. Since back then I was fiddeling with /etc/fstab and should have noticed that.

I'll reboot now, and keep you updated

[Henk Poley]

Didn't work. Same errors...

Must be something in the bootscripts then? Anybody?

[rickenbacherus]

According to the error message in your first post it's missing the proc file system. Has it been changed in fstab? Has k3b removed it even? It wouldn't surprise me at all. I very much dislike the K3b setup- it wrecked my fstab too, that was the first time I tried to use it, the second time it freaked out trying to copy a cd-I've seen alot of other posts about K3b not working correctly. It has too many bugs for me to use.

[Henk Poley]

Well, actually I don't think it's K3b after all. It's been some time since I ran it, and I've booted succesfully many times since.

As you can see, everything seems allright:

# /etc/fstab: filesystem table.
#
# filesystem mountpoint type options dump pass
/dev/hda9 / ext3 defaults,errors=remount-ro 0 1
/dev/hda10 none swap sw 0 0
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
/dev/fd0 /floppy vfat defaults,user,noauto,showexec,umask=022 0 0
/dev/cdrom /cdrom iso9660 defaults,ro,user,noexec,noauto 0 0
#/dev/scd0 /cdrom1 auto defaults,ro,user,noexec,noauto 0 0
#/dev/scd1 /cdrom2 auto defaults,ro,user,noexec,noauto 0 0
# partitions found by Knoppix
/dev/hda1 /mnt/hda1 vfat auto,users,exec,umask=000,uid=knoppix,gid=knoppix 0 0
/dev/hda5 /mnt/hda5 vfat auto,users,exec,umask=000,uid=knoppix,gid=knoppix 0 0
/dev/hda6 /mnt/hda6 vfat auto,users,exec,umask=000,uid=knoppix,gid=knoppix 0 0
/dev/hda7 /mnt/hda7 vfat auto,users,exec,umask=000,uid=knoppix,gid=knoppix 0 0
/dev/hda8 /mnt/hda8 vfat auto,users,exec,umask=000,uid=knoppix,gid=knoppix 0 0
#/dev/hda9 /mnt/hda9 ext3 noauto,users,exec 0 0

I just changed my two cdrom drives to point to /cdrom1 and /cdrom2. And since it still didn't boot I commented them out again.

btw, should I try changing

proc /proc proc defaults 0 0

to

/proc /proc proc defaults 0 0

[edit]I've searched a bit, and it seems to be correct like it already is...[/edit]