[ale] mandrake help

[Michael D. Hirsch]

On Tuesday 06 May 2003 12:24 pm, Robert E. Karaffa, II wrote:
> hi folks,
>     I managed to hose my mandrake box during an upgrade from 8.2 to 9.1.
> the thing boots to the point of an error message:  "warning:  unable to
> open an initial console".

Sounds like your /dev directory got messed up.

>     I've been doing some self-help but haven't come up with a solution
> that I fully understand.  So far, I've booted from the rescue CD, and am
> able to get to my old partitions, so /var, /usr, /home and / are all
> still there (yay!).  however, I haven't yet been able to get it to boot.
>     I've had a look at lilo.conf...seems to be correct, but I'm not 100%
> sure.  fstab looks okay, all partitions are listed correctly.
>     This mandrake box is not mission critical, but I would like to
> minimize risk to /var and /home and /usr, since some of my backup info
> is stored in /home, and the web server stuff I'd like to keep if
> possible.
>     Anybody willing to toss me a lifeline?  It is greatly appreciated.

I wouldn't mess with trying to recover.  Do a fresh install, but don't tell 
the installer about /var and /home.  Then, after the install edit your 
/etc/fstab and add them to it.  (There may be an option to tell it not to 
reformat /home and /var--you could use that instead.)

If there is anything in /usr you want saved, copy it to /home first.

Michael
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