Re: boot and root disk
On Thu, 19 Oct 1995, Jan Leonhard Camenisch wrote:
>
> yesterday I had to use the boot and root disks (installation disks)
> to fix a configurations problem. Ok. I used option 0 of the expert-mode
> to get a shell. But I missed the 'ls' command there. Why isn't it available
> anymore? I'd appreciate to have it again....
>
>
You have the mount command, so assuming you are trying to fix an existing
installation, you can mount your existing filesystem and use the commands
on it. You just need to set up your path. If you use Debian's interface
for mounting, the root directory of the mounted filesystem will show up
under /root, so ls would be /root/bin/ls. Perhaps there is also an ls
command on the installation disks. Does anyone know.
As a side note, I also had to use the installation disks to fix a
problem. When I installed X, the configuration asked me if I wanted to
add xdm to the startup files. So if figured I would risk it and give it
a try. Well I guess I chose the wrong kind of mouse, and when xdm
started, the screen just started flickering, and the machine was
unusable. The boot disk that I made didn't help because it also ran xdm
when I started the machine. I guess I could have passed a command line
option through lilo to change the init level say, to single user mode,
but since I couldn't access the documentation on the system, I wasn't
sure how to do this so I had to use the installation disks to fix it
manually. If I was a beginner, I would be up a creek. Perhaps changing
the init level would also help Jan.
Perhaps by default, lilo should have a short set of instructions that
tell the user how to change the init level to fix such problems, instead
of just the plain LILO: prompt by itself. Something similar to the
message given during boot of the installation disks.
Just a suggestion.
Tony.
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