From owner-freebsd-questions Sun Jan 13 22:54:41 2002 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from guru.mired.org (okc-65-31-201-166.mmcable.com [65.31.201.166]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 5264237B416 for ; Sun, 13 Jan 2002 22:54:35 -0800 (PST) Received: (qmail 81249 invoked by uid 100); 14 Jan 2002 06:54:33 -0000 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-ID: <15426.32937.509856.537287@guru.mired.org> Date: Mon, 14 Jan 2002 00:54:33 -0600 To: David Syphers Cc: questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: can't mount / properly, fstab woes In-Reply-To: <115878273@toto.iv> X-Mailer: VM 6.90 under 21.1 (patch 14) "Cuyahoga Valley" XEmacs Lucid X-face: "5Mnwy%?j>IIV\)A=):rjWL~NB2aH[}Yq8Z=u~vJ`"(,&SiLvbbz2W`;h9L,Yg`+vb1>RG% *h+%X^n0EZd>TM8_IB;a8F?(Fb"lw'IgCoyM.[Lg#r\ From: "Mike Meyer" X-Delivery-Agent: TMDA/0.43 (Python 2.2; freebsd-4.4-STABLE-i386) Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG David Syphers types: > On Saturday 12 January 2002 07:40 pm, Chris Fedde wrote: > > On Sat, 12 Jan 2002 19:00:02 -0600 David Syphers wrote: > I can't. That's what I meant when I said that "it won't let me mount / > read-write." I tried > > # mount -u -w / > # mount -u -w /dev/ad0s1a > # mount -u -w -f /dev/ad0s1a > > and none of them work. They all give the error "fstab /etc/fstab :3: > inappropriate file type or format". Why is it looking at fstab anyway, if > I've specified the device name? Because you didn't specify the mount point? I'm not able to test this, but I'd suggest: 1) shutdown -r 2) reboot to single user mode 3) mount -u -o ro / /dev/ad0s1a > And how did I kill fstab by changing 'rw' to 'r' for / ? You may have made a typo along the way, or it may have been fried by later activity - didn't you describe a cras? Have you checked the file to see what's in it? > > Another approach is to ship out a new drive properly > > installed so that the remote hands only have to switch drives and > > free you from the drudgery of using their eyes and hands. > An option only if I had some sort of budget - I mean, my web/mail server is a > 486 :) Third option, for the truly despserate and slightly insane. Load /dev/ad0s1a in a binary editor, and make the length of the inode /etc/fstab points at 0. > > Read only / disk is safe if you are careful and understand what you > > are doing. Remember that security is inversely proportional to > > convenience. > What did I do that was wrong, then? All I changed was / to read-only. This, > and this alone, caused my web server to stop functioning. I'd say you weren't careful enough. Your web server probably needed write access to something on /, which it can no longer get. Check the web server log files when you have the chance to see what it complained about. http://www.mired.org/home/mwm/ Independent WWW/Perforce/FreeBSD/Unix consultant, email for more information. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message