Trouble: cant do anything

[Matthew Seaman]

On Wed, Oct 29, 2003 at 05:03:31AM -0300, Carvalho Paulo wrote:

>   First of all I was having troable to install version
> 5.1 on my machine, but then i finaly got it (or at
> list I thought so). When I boot the system it asks me
> to write the path of my shell, and since I don't have
> any installed I just press ENTER. Then I try to create
> a file and the system says that it's a read only file
> system. How do I enter the normal system? 

Your system isn't booting up all the way to multiuser mode.  Instead,
it's stopping at single user mode.  This is generally an indication
that something is wrong with one of the very low-level parts of the
system (generally the filesystem), and you're being left in single
user mode to give you a chance to fix the problems.

Try the following commands:

    # fsck -p
    # swapon -a 
    # mount -a

The fsck command may or may not burble about checking file systems,
but it should eventually tell you that the file systems are clean.
The other commands should run without emitting any errors.  If they do
print out anything untoward, copy it down and send it to this list and
someone should be able to advise you how to fix things.

Once you've successfully got past that step, your file systems will be
mounted read-write and you will be able to edit files as necessary to
cure the problem that stopped you booting up properly the first time.

Once you're satisfied with that, just type 'exit' to get out of single
user mode, and the system should carry on booting up to multiuser
mode.  Once you see the 'Login:' prompt, you might permit yourself a
little jig of triump, as you've successfully booted up.

	Cheers,

	Matthew

-- 
Dr Matthew J Seaman MA, D.Phil.                       26 The Paddocks
                                                      Savill Way
PGP: http://www.infracaninophile.co.uk/pgpkey         Marlow
Tel: +44 1628 476614                                  Bucks., SL7 1TH UK
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